Many of us who are approaching or in middle age are searching for the magical “fountain of youth” to drink from and recapture our younger days.
Unfortunately, there is no true fountain of youth. We pursue it anyway, using all of the various chemical and physical aids that are available today. Diet pills, Botox, hair dye and every kind of drug imaginable – yet none of them seem to work. They cover up the aging for an hour or a day, but they can’t hide the truth in the end.
The truth about aging is one that most of us don’t want to face. As my mother told me the other day, “It’s not going to get better” from a physical standpoint. Our bodies are constructed to break down over time. We can delay it, but even modern medicine and science haven’t yet found a way to stop or reverse that process.
But our attitude and how we choose to handle the challenges of aging go a long way towards keeping us young at heart even as we grow older physically.
My mother has many of the physical ailments that come with growing older. She is not a physically active person; her idea of working out would be walking to her car to go out to lunch. About a year ago she said she thought that it would be healthy to lose a few pounds. But after she thought about it a while she said, “What difference would it really make? Heck, I’m 80 years old!”
But despite the physical ailments, she is blessed with incredible mental energy and strength. She has jumped into the world of social media with both feet, even though many people her age don’t want anything to do with computers. She has her own Facebook page which she uses regularly to keep herself connected to family and old friends.
She goes to her grandchildren’s school and sporting events, plays a weekly bridge game with other people in her community and has met regularly with a grievance group since my dad passed away. She takes the attitude that she’s grateful for each day that she gets and she is going to make the most of it.
Mom was having lunch with one of my sisters the other day and they ran into my cousin Jack and visited with him for a while. I saw Jack a couple of days later and he mentioned seeing my mom. He hadn’t seen her in a while and all he could talk about was how impressed he was with her; “She seemed so young!” he said. When I shared Jack’s comment with my mother she immediately replied, “I am young!”
You see, my mom is young in her heart even though her body is old.
It is a choice offered to every one of us as we age: to either “get busy living or get busy dying.”
Have a great weekend,
Ro