Aging

I’ve spent the week in San Francisco talking in “spooky units.” Numbers that mess with my mind. My trip from Baja was precipitated by the fact that my postponed medical and wellness appointments were seriously past due.

Simone de Beauvoir is one of those epic writers and thinkers who has influenced so many of us. She’s on par with Sartre and buried next to him at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. She was an existential philosopher, early-day feminist, and political activist.

The next time someone says this sentence to you, smile, and respond, “Thank you.” Hope you enjoy the video below. #showingmyage

This week, I discussed aging in the unique and unsettling time of COVID-19 with my good friend, psychologist, gerontologist, Age Wave CEO, and best-selling author of 17 books, Ken Dychtwald, PhD.

The title of this post is a mindset. It’s also the truth for many of us in midlife and beyond. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “Along with the physical changes that occur as we get older, changes to our sleep patterns are part of the normal aging process.

Long before ICE T popularized the “Original Gangster,” the world was blessed with another OG: Old-Growth forests. MEA alum Douglas Tsoi sent me this bumper sticker from Portland, heralding the verdant green regions that populate his state.

I’m thinking about the Law of Conservation of Energy today. This law, first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. I wonder if that applies to aging.

Thanks to MEA alum Pat Whitty for the title of this post, which he sent me after he watched my YouTube video staring into my bathroom mirror. Aging is an artform, a courageous act in public.

When you’re 102 and a thread of your carefully constructed life is arbitrarily pulled, the resilience of the weave can give way very rapidly. Such is the case of Shirley, a resident in a community for older adults. In the mere two months of having to shelter in her apartment due to the coronavirus, she went from being mildly confused to completely lost.

Carl Honoré is well-known for tackling both the cult of speed and the cult of youth in his TED talks and his bestselling books, published in 35 languages. He’s a few years younger than me, but he’s quickly becoming my mentor as I’m intuiting our synapses fire together.