Aging

“From our sixties onward, let’s enjoy being stylish once again!” So, proclaims one of Japan’s hottest new magazines targeting women over 60. Japan has a variety of new magazines targeting “the nice generation” (as chronicled by Monocle magazine).

“Freed from the yolk of ambition and responsibility, released from the hunger of destiny, the elderly have time for themselves….old age is the embryonic phase of the afterlife.”

On October 4th, in Covid-19 time, typical showers were falling in London but under atypical conditions, a handful of elite runners set off on the rescheduled 2020 London marathon. Between the constraints of social distancing and the new “rule of six,” the normal hordes of cheering crowds and amateur runners were absent on the cordoned off streets. Regardless, some 45,000 diehards across the UK were running in personal, virtual marathons.

So, this is how my mind works sometimes. This morning I walked into the elevator after my dawn walk, and like every morning, the voice in my condo elevator says, “going up,” which sounded an awful lot like “growing up.” This got me thinking. What if growing up was like ascending a very tall building?

We don’t see advertisements in mainstream magazines for anti-women, anti-black, or anti-gay products, but beauty mags are full of anti-aging creams, serums, supplements, foods, and clothes.

I come from a family of women who had an entrepreneurial spirit. My grandmother and mother both had several small businesses. Thus, when I became a single parent with five of my seven children still home, no child support, and no family to help, I not only worked a day job but started micro businesses of my own.

I’m in Texas’ capital city, Austin. A place where the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, said on the eve of his 70th birthday six months ago, “As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren? And if that is the exchange, I'm all in.”

I love basketball and have suggested this sport can influence how we see our lives (here’s a recent blog post). Before 1954 in the National Basketball Association and 1985 in the NCAA, there was an expression of “running out the clock” with a “four corners offense” meant to stall when you’re winning the game. Some pundits have suggested the Biden campaign has been “running out the clock.” Not a good idea.

My friend Neel recently sent me this collection of visual life cycles that were sparked by a Twitter user who posted the life cycle of a blackberry that went viral. From there, people started sharing additional life cycle images of things like coffee, cotton, blueberries, and leaves.

If you’re been an avid Wisdom Well reader, you know I revere the Irish poet John O’Donohue who passed away way too young a dozen years ago. If you dip into his well on Google, you’ll find things like this YouTube conversation on Ageing (yes, I kept the “e” in there out of respect to John’s European roots). Here are a few of the gems from his ruminations: