Today I celebrate seventy years on our planet. Throughout my fifties and sixties, my definition of "middle age" gradually broadened but I must now accept that I have entered "old age" (though I still resist the title of being elderly).
After all, I subscribe to the popular notion that "you are as old as you feel" while acknowledging that I don't feel like a twenty-year-old (or a fifty-year-old for that matter). I am within ten years of the average life expectancy of an American male but am thankful to have made it to this age; many others, of course, do not.
Indeed, my goal is to live as long as I can care for myself; independence is far more important to me than doing all the things I was capable of during my younger years. Enjoying family, friends and low-key pastimes (hiking, birding, painting, reading, writing) is more than enough to keep me happy and I enter "old age," whether it turns out to last one year or twenty, with gratitude.
After all, I subscribe to the popular notion that "you are as old as you feel" while acknowledging that I don't feel like a twenty-year-old (or a fifty-year-old for that matter). I am within ten years of the average life expectancy of an American male but am thankful to have made it to this age; many others, of course, do not.
Indeed, my goal is to live as long as I can care for myself; independence is far more important to me than doing all the things I was capable of during my younger years. Enjoying family, friends and low-key pastimes (hiking, birding, painting, reading, writing) is more than enough to keep me happy and I enter "old age," whether it turns out to last one year or twenty, with gratitude.
