My ambition as an elder walker is to take a year and walk the length of New Zealand. It's the most beautiful place on earth and I want to see every inch of it close up. I need a backup system in the form of a pal driving a camper from stopping point to stopping point for a nightly meal and bed. And, of course, the camper must have high speed internet so I can blog and upload photos every night!

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

Hi Ronni,
I read with great interest everything you write, since I'm close on your heels at age 58. This does sound like a very nteresting book. However, one thing you wrote did make me pause, and it's a reaction I've had before to things I've seen written about aging. You say "For three years on my blog, I have been arguing for recognition of old age as it really is . . ." But that seems to me to almost imply that aging is the same for everyone. Certainly people are vastly different in their reactions to everything, including how their bodies and minds respond to the passing of time.

I guess while I agree with you that it's healthy to accept aging as a natural part of life and unhealthy to try to hang on to the attributes that come naturally as a part of youth, I feel like fighting aging in the form of taking the best care of your body that you can is a healthy way to live. For that reason, when people tell me that I "seem much younger than my age" I don't take it as a condemnation of the age that I've reached but more as an acknowledgement that I'm doing a reasonably good job of keeping my body healthy.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

...nor have I said that taking care of one's health (at any age) isn't important. But health and the age one appears to be are two different things. And the endlessly overused "compliment" every old person hears from time to time - "You don't look that old" - is ageist in its perpetuation of the youth-centric culture in which we live by assuming that youth is the ideal to be maintained at any and all cost.

As you point out, we all age differently and whatever someone looks like at any given age is what that age looks like. It is not a bad thing to look old or, rather, it should not be.

Many years ago, when I was in my thirties, I was shocked when a co-worker told me her age - three year younger than I; I had assumed she was at least ten years older, maybe more. Later, I learned that she'd been born with extraordinarily dry skin that no amount of moisturizer and special care helped much. At 30, she was long past worrying about what age she looked; all she wanted was for the skin of her face and hands not to crack open in winter.

Youthful appearance is not necessarily a sign of health. Looking younger than one's contemporaries is, like beauty, an accident of nature - both nice to have since the culture bestows privileges on those who do. But youth is not the gold standard of life as so much of our language tries to tell us.

Ronni Bennett
Time Goes By

You all might want to check out this thread in which Blohgers talk about being addressed with "diminutives". The final few posts reference age issues. You may wish to jump aboard that discussion as well.

~~ Contributing Editor, the aging Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool

It's a fascinating topic because to me aging is less about the physical and more about the mental. My parents are now 84 and almost 81 years old. They are aging. They are overwhelmed by technology and have no desire to have a computer.
Getting them to use a cell phone took years. In their 80s they are retreating from a changing world, and trying to cling on to what they are comfortable and used to. The world is beginning to overwhelm them. They do not welcome change. They want things the way they used to be.
That's what old is to me. A lack of desire to embrace the new.

It happened to them in their 80s. Other people become old in their 70s and I think there are some people who absolutely never grow old -- totally engaged, enthused and eager to tackle new things.
Yes, the physical body ages. yes, I sometimes have that old lady hop when I get out of a chair because my hip doesn't seem to release my leg smoothly. So what? It's just physical.

At 55 I am not entering old age. I'm older than someone who is 54, 44, 34, or 24, but but being older is not aging.

On the one hand I use serums and lotions and have facials to take care of my skin. But I did that in my 30s. I don't equate wanting to take care of my complexion as indicative of someone who is denying that they are not in their 30s.

Just ask me, I'll tell you my age. I Like to think that I dress my age(whatever that means).On the other hand, I just got a new pair of very funky eyeglasses that could be worn by any age group.
I gave up stilettos 30 years ago...was I old then?

I don't have any desire to be any age other than I am. In other words, yes, I want my skin to look as good as it can for MY 55 years.

While I am constantly amazed at how fast I got here, except for that,I don't think about the implications of my age very much.

Maybe its because I had children later --my daughter will be 18 in March, just 3 months before I turn 56 and I'm looking a four years of tuitiion.
Maybe its because I love my work and am not in a position,nor do I have the desire, to think about retiring,

No one is saying I can't do what I do because of my age. I haven't been pushed out of work because of my age.

Maybe if I had health problems I would feel differently about the issue, but as long as I have my health, can walk 4 miles with no problem, participate in the weight training classes at my health club,and enjoy drinking 1 1/2 glasses of wine a day to promote healthy living, then I'm content.

Quite frankly, if someone looks at me and decides that I am not worth talking to because of my appearance or because they think I'm too old, then chances are I wouldn't ever enjoy talking to them.

There are benefits in having a reclusive personality and being an introvert. My energy is not fueled by external forces but rather an internal engine. Right now, its revved up and raring to go. And, until it starts sputtering, I doubt that I will be bothered much by how 'old' I am.

In fact, I'm not sure I'll really know when I am old -- but I think my children will be happy to tell me.

elana
Blogher Contributing Editor,Business&CareersFunnyBusiness

You're right on, Ronni, in your assessment, however you say it. Good for Ruth Rendell for telling it like it is. I've heard all those well-meaning lines about how "you don't look your age." I've heard them for forty years, since I was in my thirties. My mother heard them 'til the day she died at almost 90 years. I know she took common sense practical care of her health, how she did so, but also what few cosmetic products she used. I've seen enough people who "did all the right things," used the wonder products, had the procedures, then they aged in spite of it all, or in some cases because of it. I hope you keep talking about "aging like it really is," and as I know it to be, Ronni.

I think science, the old nature vs nurture arguments, what we've been learning about our genes, would bear out we each have predispositions, and in some cases, high probabilities of aging and appearing certain ways. This will result in some appearing "younger" (whatever that means since it's often in the eye and mind of the beholder,) and others appearing "older" (from some perspectives.)

Certainly, "healthy life styles" contribute, but even defining that phrase seems to be somewhat in question, depending upon with whom you consult. Also, what contributes varies over time, so I wonder what we don't know now, or what contradicts what we currently believe, as has been the case on many occasions in the past.

I also posit that as different as we all are, what may be healthy for one is not for another. As for all the products that are sold to assist with our healthy body maintenance which, also, somehow often is said to correlate with a "more youthful appearance," it seems we women have much more need for these products than the males. I'll let others speculate as to why the gender difference causes this to be so, though companies are going after the men, too, in recent years. I guess they feel they must "enlighten" the men, but I think there's another more commercial word that describes what that's about.

I will say this -- if you read anything at all about objective scientific analysis (not the promotion "analysis" manufacturers, marketing, celebrity shillers put forth,) most of these products are simply ineffective, much like the items sold door to door by "snake oil salesman" of my mother's generation in the early 1900's. Also, they are sold at multiple percentages well above the actual cost -- often a few cents -- it takes to manufacture them.

I'm always amazed at the products people buy to apply to the skin for "absorption" when it is a documented scientific fact that some of what they think they are "absorbing" can only be accomplished by ingestion in other forms.

Digressing from the topic of this piece, to the subject of "diminutives" that falls into the area of language used with elders that you have previously discussed, either here and/or at your other blog "Time Goes By," I will simply say no generation wants to be the recipient of such terms. I did adjust to "hon" as a young girl when we moved to a southern state where it was used for all ages all genders.

Joared
Along The Way