Thoughts on Aging. Aug 28, 2023

 

I am very grateful to still be alive in my mid-70s.  Many people do not get to this age and the experience of aging is very interesting and is part of life and I'm glad not to have missed it.

When you're young aging seems like a sad thing and you tend to think of your body getting old and your looks and abilities fading.  Those things are true, and they matter, but when you are actually old they matter less and less.  

You do have a sense of a life having been lived and that is a good and comforting thing. You of course do hope that it is lived for a while longer.  It becomes easier to live in the day - you still plan ahead but you don't count on tomorrow coming in the same way you once did.

If you're lucky, as I have been, you also get to retire in a reasonably comfortable financial and physical situation and the freedom of the post-retirement years for me has been a wonderful thing. 

Like most people I think my greatest concern with aging is my mental state and I am grateful every day that I am still able to function on my own.  Not that those little "senior moments" when you have trouble recalling something don't cause concern.

Then there is death.  It looms closer.  Yet it is less of a concern as it does get closer.  At my age I have lost friends and of course many of the public figures I grew up knowing have also passed.  So there is a feeling that in my turn I will be part of that process of the people and the times I knew passing from the world and I will be simply taking my place in that. It feels a little melancholy but not really frightening.  

I don't believe in an afterlife, I think when I die I will simply be gone.

Many people die at young ages which is not "fair".  Especially deaths that are not due to illness or accidents but are caused by war, crime, anger, jealousy, poverty- things that don't need to be but are only there because of human actions.

On Demand

 

I find that I never watch any program on live TV now.  Everything I watch is either on demand or on the internet or on a DVD I've borrowed from the library.

Recently I was thinking back to "the old days" , as we old folks are wont to do, and remembering waiting all week for the next episode of a series on PBS.

Also, having to be sure to be in front of the TV at the right (and only) time to catch the next episode or a series you watched.  If you missed it that was it unless you were able to catch it months later on a summer rerun.

Not that I mind being able to see things when I choose, it's wonderful.  My only issue is that there is so much that I would like to watch and not enough time.  

I generally spend my mornings doing chores and errands (I like to get out and home before noon in order to avoid the busier world from lunchtime onward), then the afternoon reading,TV after dinner, then more reading before turning off the light and going to sleep.  

I thought I would have so much time for myself when I retired but the days fly by and there's no possible way to do, read, see all the things I would like.