Saturday, March 25, 2006

How Old is Old?

In the past few months I've come across some blogs that talk about getting old and how awful it is. It made me curious as to how old they are. I checked the profile and they generally are in their 20s. Are you kidding me!

I guess it is all relevant. I remember when I was in my late teens and seeing an obituary that stated the person was 40 when he died. I remember the stunned look on my mom's face when I blurted out "well, at least he had a long, full life". 40 was, like, so far away then.

Now that I see 40 in the rear view mirror, I have a new look on life. I see my dad, at 89, still going strong. He can out hike me any day. There is no way I can beat him at ping pong. Now, instead of thinking of myself as old, ( though I have been there, done that) I see how much is still in front of me. There actually are things left to try, places yet to see. So don't despair you 20 somethings, you've got a long way to go.

3 comments:

Erie's Argonaut said...

Joking about it is how some of us older people deal with being old, ha. I hope you didn't think I was being critical, just having some fun. My husband read my entry and your comment and looked at me, knowingly smiled and said, "Your first 'letter to the editor'."

delhidreams said...

i've seen many kids older than the oldest people i've met...
its all in the mind...
and the mind reacts to the circumstances
being old is not the problem here i guess, it is being comfortable with what you have...

Anonymous said...

I'm 46 and I retired from a 28-year career with Verizon yesterday. I've always considered retired people as "old" folks until I became one of them! One girl who attended my retirement party last night asked me, "so what are you going to do with the next 50 years of your life?"