Counting the blessings of age, even with its limitations

Skip forward 50 years. You guessed it. While I learned a little about who is in charge, I’m still pushing limits. I’m still having this acceptance problem. It seems only right I should continue on as I did several decades ago.

Wrong.

Vanity tells me I can climb Mount Everest. Sanity says slow down. Sanity stinks, so I continue to push limits (which aren’t as rigorous as climbing Everest) then pay for my lofty goals with my health. No matter how thin we get, how much makeup we apply or how many times we hit the gym, the body slows down. It is a fact. Not much we can do about it.

Often, the strong willed child becomes the bull-headed adult. We hand out headaches and heartaches to our loved ones because we do not want to admit aging takes a lot out of us. Sometimes it takes too much out of us and we become vulnerable to injury — or worse. But there’s a balance: Anxiety about aging and the way it limits us can be a liability, too.

A Psychology Today article,”Learning to Love Growing Old,” says “fear of aging speeds the very decline we dread most and it ultimately robs our life of any meaning.”

At this time of Thanksgiving, perhaps we should literally pause and be thankful for the time we’ve had and the time for which we might be given on this earth. As it’s been said, “Not everyone gets to enjoy another birthday.”

The article goes on to say:

“Recognize and accept the aging process and all that goes with it as a reality, a natural part of the life cycle, it happens to us all. The goal is to change the prevailing view of aging as something to be feared and the aged as worthless.”

Perhaps after we become senior adults, we do not have the energy we once had, but many senior adults have accomplished great things.

For example, Frank McCourt, a child of the Great Depression, published the award winning bestseller Angela’s Ashes on his impoverished beginnings in Brooklyn and Ireland. He was 66 when the book was published.

And, Yuichiro Miura set a world record in 2003 by becoming the oldest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He broke his own record in 2013 by again becoming the oldest person to summit Mount Everest at age 80. He plans to break his record again at 90.

While these accomplishments are admirable, not all of us have the energy to make lofty accomplishments. Perhaps one might bake the best pecan pie or chocolate cake (as my husband’s aunt did almost until she the day she died). Or another friend’s claim to fame was the beautiful yard he kept year round.

Other senior adults play musical instruments around town and in their houses of worship.

It matters not how famous we become. What matters most is that we know our own strength and accomplish what we can do at our stage in life, and that we enjoy it and move forward.

As we pause at the end of the month to celebrate Thanksgiving, no matter how old we are, what our physical condition is or the losses we’ve endured, may we be thankful.

As for me? May I work on accepting what befalls me in life. Big chore.

Happy Thanksgiving to my readers. As the saying goes: “There is always, always, always something for which to be thankful.”