#agingwithjoy

It is great to hear how others view the aging process and conclude what I believe and that is: attitude is key for internal joy!  This is what actor, author and radio host Shirley MacLaine has to say about the aging journey.

Experiencing and living life should become limitless when we age.  Age should be liberating. Youth and age are such an extreme contradiction. Yet as the world's population gets older it becomes more and more obvious that the youth side of the equation rules advertising, marketing, film making, manufacturing and just about everything else. With so many facets of life dedicated to the word 'young', it is no wonder we explore every capability within our reach to maintain our youth. We exercise until we drop so that our body can retrieve a shape hasn't had in twenty years. We undergo various medical or surgical procedures to mold, sculpt, tighten, firm and refresh our physical bodies. We color every strand of silver, add hair where it has vanished and remove hair that has appeared. We try every diet and elixir that holds even the most remote possibility for attaining a teenager's physique and energy.

Is this wrong? Absolutely not!  But, as we are doing all of these things we have to acknowledge the fact that life is moving us forward in time and that we have created the word, concept and identification associated with aging. Being old is a relative circumstance; when one is ten years old, someone who is forty seems ancient. Unfortunately we have a tendency to carry that youthful relativity throughout life. When we reach forty, or whatever magic number we have attached to the concept of being old, we identify with that, begin to think and feel old and equate it to uselessness, lack of vitality and our own mortality.

The joy of being in mid-life is seeing multiple generationsof your family.  You have your parents, possibly even grandparents and you have your children, possibly even grandchildren, and oodles of aunts, uncles and cousins.  And best of all, you are in the prime of your own life. Mid-life often means enjoying an inner confidence that comes with having completed school, established a career path, put some money in the bank and being physically robust.  We lead busy, active lives and challenges that come our way we know we can overcome or will just muddle through them.  The hurdles pass.  We are confident, competent and more carefree than we were during the emotional early years.  Really, it is the perfect time to reflect on your life within the context of time itself. I am fascinated by my families’ similarities.  I like to look for inherited details, the small things such as hair texture, temperament, contour of their hands or mannerisms.

My youngest nephew, who lives on the other side of Canada, was visiting us for a week in the summer up at our cottage.  I like to say, “two cute for two and trouble at three”.  He was three years old.  One day as I was opening my fridge I noticed the fridge magnets were missing.  As the fridge door opened wider I saw that they were now inside the fridge, on the front of every shelf.  One magnet is a favourite keepsake and had been the focus of my nephew’s attention since he’d spotted it.  A long time ago my kids loved everything Gymboree and their iconic mascot is Gymbo The Clown; we still have him in magnet form. 

As the likely suspect of my fridge redecorating was sitting at the table playing with our buckets of Fusion Beads, I asked, looking at him, “Who put Gymbo in the fridge?” His blue eyes opened wide, his grin stretched straight back and then with the slightest shrug of his shoulder, he rolled his eyes up to the side and turned both his hands outwards – indicating he did not know anything about it.