Am I old yet? Have you heard this phrase? I have. I don’t know why it is but lately I have heard a lot of chatter about age and aging, specifically about getting OLD. I have heard, “am I old yet” fly out of the mouths of men and women of all ages, voiced on blogs, in gatherings and then we can’t forget what we hear on all sorts of Media. The complaints go from aches and pains, gray hair and sagging everything. It’s apparent we are a nation obsessed with trying hard to avoid growing OLD, and I’m just as guilty (if not more so). Because of this obsession, there is a huge industry that has been built around offering us the dream, or allusion that we can stop the clock or at least look as if we did.
So, Am I Old Yet?
Here’s a NEWS FLASH, released at the beginning of time. We start growing old the very first day of our birth. In fact, we celebrate our growing older every year ON our birthdays. As hard as it is to accept, every day of our lives moves us closer to the end. HOW DEPRESSING, but still true.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to do, look and be our best at all times, what I am saying is to look and act our age. It is so much more attractive, and we all know what I mean by that…. :D.
So here is what I propose. Instead asking am I old yet and obsessing and wasting all our energy, valuable time and a great deal of money in an effort to reverse an irreversible clock, why don’t we just enjoy where we are and what we have right now. That way we can stop mourning the minutes we’ve lost and start enjoying them while they’re happening.
Age or ageless, it’s all about how we feel and where we are at different points in time. As I have mentioned before, I am an avid listener of PBS and NPR. Not very long ago there was a documentary on PBS about “Being Over 90 & Loving It”; we should be so lucky. Click on this link and it will take you there. I dare you to watch it. I promise you will get something out of it.
What I found so impressive in this documentary were these people who didn’t ask “Am I old yet”. They didn’t care about their age. How refreshing. The individuals showcased in the documentary have ALWAYS looked at life as something that could end at any time. With that attitude, they are living and loving, every dang minute of their lives as if it were their last. We could take lessons from them.
To quote Steve Jobs from a commencement speech made at Stanford University in 2005:
- acaben / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know how to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Live life now, not tomorrow. Don’t mourn yesterday, it’s a waste of valuable time. Just live in the moment as if it were your last, starting right now.
Life’s journey continues…
If you liked Am I Old Yet, check out Destinations, Fortune Cookie and Springhouse Frog.
PS: What are some of your favorite stories? If you would like to write a guest post about an experience, we would love to hear from you.
While you’re here, take a moment to subscribe to our updates using the link button below. As a thank-you, you will receive two PDF’s for Wine and Cheese Pairings and Wine and Chocolate Pairings, suitable for framing. We appreciate your stopping by, and we look forward to you joining in the conversion with Susan.
