What Gets better with age?
- Wine?
- Cheese?
- My thighs?
Don’t answer that!
What I’m really wondering is, what about our life gets better as we age? I mean—REALLY age.
Early in life, the benefits of growing older are many and fairly clear.
- Our personal freedom increases
- Exciting new careers await us
- New relationships
- No more high school!!!!
The world of positive possibilities seems endless. Unfortunately, as we continue to age, this little globe of possibilities seems to shrink, and let’s be honest, becomes a bit more difficult to define as positive.
- New aches!
- New pains!
- New wrinkles!
- (There was more to this list, but I can’t remember it)
So, here’s my challenge to you: Watch the video below about Olga, the 91-year-old track star. Olga found a way to grow old, not only gracefully, but also with pizzazz! She began competing in track and field 14 years ago. Among other things, she competes in sprints, long jump, high jump and hammer throw. She holds several world records and has over 600 gold medals. While I’m sure her list contains aches, pains and a bit of memory loss—CLEARLY, it also contains a long list of positives.
Olga is 91-years-old!
Which means she began competing when she was 77-years-old!
While her physical accomplishment is amazing, what’s most significant to me is that at an age when many of us would be content to coast on past accomplishments, she found new purpose and passion for life.
I want to be like Olga!
For nerds like me for whom high school was a low point, almost EVERYTHING gets better with age. Even my thighs (who wish that tights would come back as part of a bathing costume) in the fact that they carried me all this way and yes, have marks from the journey. Focus, clarity, appreciation for small things, discernment about people, places and ideas. Even when I rush around, I no longer rush around in twenty directions at once with no idea what feeds my soul. Most days, aging (ouch, excuse me while I stretch my lower back) is a blessing.
Well said and so true. I’m thinking that as I age the ability to just be, rather than always be doing, or achieving will be a welcome change.
For me it’s that I worry less about dying prematurely, since aging puts me closer to a natural death, making me feel less guilty for leading a less than wholesome lifestyle, for much of my earlier life . . .
What do I like about aging? Figuring out better what makes me tick, and looking forward to becoming more and more the person I want to be.
Ok, so I have a long way to go – but, hopefully, I do have a long time yet in which to accomplish this!
Plus, I don’t hesitate to take a nap whenever I can.
I like that I can stick a hat on, go out and run errands without makeup and not worry about who sees me. Overall, I feel much more comfortable in my own skin and just glad to be doing what I love!