Am I 80 Years Old or 80 Years Young?

^{Photo by Phillippe Leone on Unsplash}

From the day I turned 79 years old in mid-2022, I began obsessing about living into my 80th year. This obsession, which carried negative implications about getting quite old, created anxiety and worry within me and detracted from the potential joys of reaching that advanced age intact and in good health. And now that I am well past my 80th birthday, I am needing to work on undoing much of that unnecessary negative psychological impact that I experienced by focusing on getting older as a negative rather than as a source of celebration and gratitude.

A century ago, reaching one’s 80th year might have been seen as a somewhat rare event and “the beginning of the end.” But my physician tells me that now in this modern age my life expectancy is probably around age 95. So, I need to ask myself if I want to dwell on my advancing age for the next 15 years or so or to “grasp life by the throat” and live as fully and joyfully as possible for as long as I am given the gift of life.

I understand that I will not begin to get younger and that there will be more losses and declines in health along the way. And I appreciate that there is absolutely no guarantee as to how long I will live. But anxiously waiting around for the inevitable rather than cherishing whatever time I do have left, and living my life to its fullest, is obviously a much healthier and enlightened perspective.

Sometimes I have significant trouble recalling peoples’ names, which others mistakenly believe is a sign of impending senility. But there is a big difference between not being able to recall something that is still there in one’s memory bank vs. having entirely lost that memory. It is normal to struggle with recall as one gets older, but to lose completely the memory of something that is well known is in fact an ominous sign of cognitive decline and should be evaluated.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful spiritual practices for all of us. When you listen to the news and hear about how much of the world is struggling simply to survive, it should give one a sense of gratitude for the good fortune we have to live in a democracy which has built-in financial safeguards for us seniors, excellent health care, and opportunities to maintain our focus on learning as we continue to expand our minds rather than shut them down.

I have also learned at this milestone in my life that my interests and orientation about certain things have changed as the decades have flown by. But these changes are normative and appropriate. It is my middle-age adult children who now ski or travel abroad regularly. But no one has seen me on skis for over 20 years, and my overseas travel is now less and less adventuresome. These changes are consistent with normal aging and are gradual assuming no major health concerns have arisen.

The bottom line is to live life to its fullest while managing whatever health limitations one may have, practice gratitude for the life you have been gifted, and remain positive and future-oriented for the unknowable amount of time that lies ahead.

My new and more enlightened perspective is to perceive the wonder and awe in things around me, what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called “radical amazement,” every hour of the day rather than focusing on the little flaws that can create frustration and negativity. This will assuredly lengthen the quality of time I have remaining and may even increase the quantity due to the reduction in the non-specific stress factors which can have a negative impact.