Aging
It’s not surprising that we have many guests on Prime Time Radio whose expertise is the process of aging. Two diverse guests resonated with me recently and caused me to think more about aging than I usually do.
Aging is something I find it easy to not think about since there is not too much I can do about it. But Anne Kreamer’s Going Gray reminded me that many of us believe that, by changing our external appearance, we can appear not to be aging. This is sheer delusion, of course, but as Kreamer realized, she had spent over $65,000 in the past twenty years coloring her hair to avoid going gray.
(Listen to my conversation with Anne Kreamer with Real Audio.)
Yet she was not a day younger after all that investment. She is clear: that the perception is that women with gray hair are regarded as more antique than their tinted sisters and she may be right. Except that she found many successful women, youthful in mind and action, who had gone gray long ago.
Then there was Lillian Rubin, author of 60 on Up: The Truth About Aging in America. She is in her eighties and recently began a new career as an artist. She sold her first painting at the age of eighty-two. Her book is a sometimes-brutal look at aging.
She points out, for instance, that we spend millions of dollars on keeping men and women alive but a fraction of that, if anything, on ways to make their old age more comfortable or even tolerable. Life, it seems, is more important than how that life is spent.
She points out: “We say we want to die with dignity and mean it, but we’re so frightened of death that we submit to often painful and undignified medical procedures in the often vain hope of putting off our meeting with it just a little longer.” Perhaps that is a human failing, like the desire to believe that tinting our hair to cover the gray does something significant for the way we age.
(Listen to my conversation with Lillian Rubin with Real Audio.)
Both books made me assess how well I’m handling aging. At times, the best times, with equanimity and rational acceptance of what is. At other times, the worst, a frustration at the lack of control it is possible to achieve over the last decades of life.
I do not enjoy counting pills every morning and every night; pills that lower my blood pressure, control my cholesterol, shrink my prostate and take away inflammation from my knee. I do not enjoy looking at menus and seeing things that I know I can’t have if I want to control my blood sugar. But it is all part of aging that I must accept because there is little alternative.
My hair is gray, my knees man-made; my back is never what it used to be and I am shrinking. I hope I can approach the rest of aging with the dignity that Rubin talks about. I plan on it. But another part of aging that we cannot escape is that things change. What I fear most about aging is the loss of the ability to adapt. So far, so good.
I wonder what you fear most about aging and how you’re coping. Share it with us by clicking "comments" below. We post your comments soon after you send them.
Aging is something I find it easy to not think about since there is not too much I can do about it. But Anne Kreamer’s Going Gray reminded me that many of us believe that, by changing our external appearance, we can appear not to be aging. This is sheer delusion, of course, but as Kreamer realized, she had spent over $65,000 in the past twenty years coloring her hair to avoid going gray.
(Listen to my conversation with Anne Kreamer with Real Audio.)
Yet she was not a day younger after all that investment. She is clear: that the perception is that women with gray hair are regarded as more antique than their tinted sisters and she may be right. Except that she found many successful women, youthful in mind and action, who had gone gray long ago.
Then there was Lillian Rubin, author of 60 on Up: The Truth About Aging in America. She is in her eighties and recently began a new career as an artist. She sold her first painting at the age of eighty-two. Her book is a sometimes-brutal look at aging.
She points out, for instance, that we spend millions of dollars on keeping men and women alive but a fraction of that, if anything, on ways to make their old age more comfortable or even tolerable. Life, it seems, is more important than how that life is spent.
She points out: “We say we want to die with dignity and mean it, but we’re so frightened of death that we submit to often painful and undignified medical procedures in the often vain hope of putting off our meeting with it just a little longer.” Perhaps that is a human failing, like the desire to believe that tinting our hair to cover the gray does something significant for the way we age.
(Listen to my conversation with Lillian Rubin with Real Audio.)
Both books made me assess how well I’m handling aging. At times, the best times, with equanimity and rational acceptance of what is. At other times, the worst, a frustration at the lack of control it is possible to achieve over the last decades of life.
I do not enjoy counting pills every morning and every night; pills that lower my blood pressure, control my cholesterol, shrink my prostate and take away inflammation from my knee. I do not enjoy looking at menus and seeing things that I know I can’t have if I want to control my blood sugar. But it is all part of aging that I must accept because there is little alternative.
My hair is gray, my knees man-made; my back is never what it used to be and I am shrinking. I hope I can approach the rest of aging with the dignity that Rubin talks about. I plan on it. But another part of aging that we cannot escape is that things change. What I fear most about aging is the loss of the ability to adapt. So far, so good.
I wonder what you fear most about aging and how you’re coping. Share it with us by clicking "comments" below. We post your comments soon after you send them.
posted by Mike Cuthbert at 11:28 AM
4 Comments:
I do not fear aging, as having 4 children and 6 grandchildren at nearly 58 and being told I don't "look" it, makes no difference. What does it really mean not to"look" that age?
For me it's all in the mind and how we look at life.
I only worry about my future as having just lost a wonderful husband suddenly. He and I had such plans, he just retired from the fire dept after 32 yrs.
How does one go on? In my own way I fear being without him as we were inseperable. We always spoke of taking care of one another in old age. Life is so precious and we must take each day with our loved ones as if it was our last day on earth. Now I understand this sentiment I have heard so many times prior to his sudden death.
Chris.
Thanks for your poignant note. I have not had that kind of thing happen to me so I won't be arrogant enough to claim that I know what you're going through. All I have to go on is what we have learned from the various people we have had on the program who HAVE shared your experience of loss and how they have found themselves and others they know reacting.
A recent guest, for example, taught herself to find the positive values in aloneness. Not loneliness, but being alone and able to contemplate, act, create or merely vegetate for a while in aloneness.
Others have advocated finding groups of women who have gone through the same sudden loss and bonding with them for emotional support. Still others find that they can find love again while not losing the love they have for the spouse they lost.
What they have taught me to expect from life is the unexpected.
We can't anticipate it, surely, and we can't control it. What we know we must do, if we value our selves, is to react to it and know that we can grow from it. It might be that we learn more about ourselves from our losses than from our acquisitions and that losses make us stronger in the end.
As for the lesson of living each day as if it's the last we have with our loved ones, that's a vital lesson that can make us all richer, especially if we extend that feeling to our friends and neighbors. Thank you for reminding us of that.
Mike
One of the nifty things about aging and blogging and free time is if you spend enough time at all three, you come across good people from your past.
And so it is that i must assume there is only one Mike Cuthbert, who at a time when he owned both his original knees and he took far fewer pill, he anchored a morning radio show on WRC in the Nation's capitol.
And on that show for a period of several years, he had a movie critic who'd call in each morning with a review and consider it a success if he could get a rise out of Mike.
A laugh or note of approval would do nicely at times, or--if the day wasn't filling up with too much news--a little of that fabled Radio chit-chat.
One particular morning the critic reviewed a film with a actor in it whose performance was so wretched--in his opinion--he expected never to hear of him again.
To prove it, he quoted a few memorable lines of dialogue, taking care to imitate the actor's unfortunate accent. Upon repeating the classic line "You killed my foddah and stole his swart," the critic and the rest of Washington heard Mike shriek with laughter.
Ah yes, Mike, we had our laughs at that poor unfortunate wretch, whose career we so rightly dismissed. Okay, you just laughed, but I knew the guy was toast as an actor. Whatever became of "Conan the Barbarian" star Arnold Schwarzenegger anyway?
Glad to run across you Mike, and would love to catch up--or at least compare medications.
I don't mind aging a bit. I've never learned to drive but I get around on the buses really well and meet a number of people to talk to who make my life interesting. At 87 I,m in pretty good health and though I also have to watch my sugar and salt and cholerserol I take it in stride. One thing I will never give up though is my love of chocolate. I must have my small share every evening and a coffee with Baileys sure can make you feel good.
The idea is to keep being upbeat and not to worry any more. I wish everyone the best health they can muster and keep moving and doing as much as you can.
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