Embracing Another Birthday

Yesterday, I turned 61 -- 3 years away from the “will you still need me, will you still feed me?” marker. As one who embraces aging if not the aging process, I have a defiantly positive attitude about growing older. 

My life today is unequivocally better than it was at age 25. I believe a lot of you feel the same. I would not want to turn back the clock to when I had brown hair and worked until 8 pm, nor do I romanticize my youth. I have a husband, house, travel, and learning agenda, that keep me vital if not chronologically young.

 

No, I don’t give a damn that I’m getting older. I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

But there are moments when the weight of the culture’s attitude toward aging sneaks up on my sense of acceptance.   

 

I recently watched an eye-opening segment on CBS Sunday Morning about ageism. CBS Sunday Morning’s demographics skew old. It is also an excellent magazine-style program. In evidence of internalized ageism, I have sometimes avoided watching this program for fear that its demographics may be contagious. But I am learning to face my phobia.

 

Some of the things I’d already intuited about ageism were confirmed by experts on the CBS show. They called it “everyday ageism," which is omnipresent and pernicious. 

 

That our culture bombards us with ageist messages from youth, that anything equating youth with “better’ is inherently ageist, and that people start believing that aging itself is undesirable all seem true enough. 

Think about it: aging is undesirable. How do you live without aging?

 

The real kicker was what a health expert had to say about ageism: it is bad for health and is being studied as a source of chronic stress associated with premature mortality. We need to see ageism as a deleterious influencer on health. 

 

The flip side is that having an upbeat attitude about aging can enhance longevity. 

 

Even in the workplace, teasing and self-deprecation over age seem allowable because ageism is not taken seriously. We are indoctrinated to believe that we must have a clichéd sense of humor about age. 

 

None of this means I want to become the poster boy for aging. Or that I deny the bodily realities of aging. 

For all that, my birthdays bring about a sense of profound gratitude for where I am in life and not a yearning for where I used to be as a 25-year-old whose exploits can only be described as clueless. 

 

I like to think that I, at 61, finally have a clue.