Aging ?? - Blog Posts
the fact im going to be old enough to vote in the next election is scary
Should you remember Kathryn Joosten?
What’s important isn’t The West Wing or Desperate Housewives.
Joosten didn’t start acting until she was 42.
Didn’t go to Hollywood until she was in her 50s.
Took the first role you remember her for at 59.
By the time she passed away at 72, she had two Emmys and was loved by millions.
So the next time you think you’re too old to do something big, that’s when you should remember Kathryn Joosten.
I love how we measure our lives in years because each year is a revolution around the sun and we’re physically in the same place each year but we’ve changed and aged and the world is different but we’re going in the same circle over and over again and by nature life is both cyclical and progressive
my Birthday
It brings so many emotions. Depression, fear, sadness but also love. My birthday might not be the best day ever. But that might not be a bad thing. I feel like I grow more patient with each passing birthday. I also began trying something new. I started virtual letters from futureme.org which should help me feel better when my next birthday comes around. But I'm 26, age might be a number but sometimes it's a cruel number and I don't like that I'm not 25 anymore. Five at least is my favorite number. But what is six? It's a new number.. An unfamiliar number I don't really like. Next year I should get a surprise email that shares some of my biggest fears and gives me some of my biggest answers. It should hopefully inspire me in some fashion. My anxiety seems to grow worse the more I think about that number. I'd rather not see it again.
interpretation by Lee Jeffries "homeless" - oil on paper
The Sissy Strikes Back
I’ve lost faith in the saying “You’re only as old as you think you are” ever since I got old. It is a saying with a fine heritage. It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits in so well with the Power of Commercial Advertising and with the Power of Wishful Thinking aka the American Dream. It is the bright side of Puritanism: What you deserve is what you get. (Never mind just now about the dark side.) Good things come to good people and youth will last forever for the young in heart. Yup. There is a whole lot of power in positive thinking. It is the great placebo effect. In many cases, even dire cases, it works. I think most old people know that, and many of us try to keep our thinking on the positive side as a matter of self-preservation, as well as dignity, the wish not to end with a prolonged whimper. It can be very hard to believe that one is actually 80 years old, but as they say, you’d better believe it. I’ve known clear-headed, clear-hearted people in their nineties. They didn’t think they were young. They knew, with a patient, canny clarity, how old they were. If I’m 90 and believe I’m 45, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub. Even if I’m 70 and think I’m 40, I’m fooling myself to the extent of almost certainly acting like an awful fool. Actually, I’ve never heard anybody over 70 say that you’re only as old as you think you are. Younger people say it to themselves or each other as an encouragement. When they say it to somebody who actually is old, they don’t realize how stupid it is, and how cruel it may be. At least there isn’t a poster of it.
But there is a poster of “Old age is not for sissies”—maybe it’s where the saying came from. A man and a woman in their seventies. As I remember it, they both have what the air force used to call the Look of Eagles, and are wearing very tight-fitting minimal clothing, and are altogether very fit. Their pose suggests that they’ve just run a marathon and aren’t breathing hard while they relax by lifting 16-pound barbells. Look at us, they say. Old age is not for sissies. Look at me, I snarl at them. I can’t run, I can’t lift barbells, and the thought of me in tight-fitting minimal clothing is appalling in all ways. I am a sissy. I always was. Who are you jocks to say old age isn’t for me? Old age is for anybody who gets there. Warriors get old; sissies get old. In fact it’s likely that more sissies than warriors get old. Old age is for the healthy, the strong, the tough, the intrepid, the sick, the weak, the cowardly, the incompetent. People who run 10 miles every morning before breakfast and people who live in a wheelchair. People who work the London Times crossword in ink in 10 minutes and people who can’t quite remember who the president is just now. Old age is less a matter of fitness or courage than of luck equals longevity. The leafy greens and the workouts may well help that old age to be healthy, but unfair as it may be, nothing guarantees health to the old. Bodies wear out after a certain amount of mileage despite the most careful maintenance. No matter what you eat and how grand your abs and blabs are, still your bones can let you down, your heart can get tired of its incredible nonstop lifelong athletic performance, and there’s all that wiring and stuff inside that can begin to short-circuit. If you did hard physical labor all your life and didn’t really have the chance to spend a lot of time in gyms, if you ate mostly junk food because it’s all you knew about and all you could afford in time and money, if you haven’t got a doctor because you can’t buy the insurance that stands between you and the doctors and the medicines you need, you may arrive at old age in rather bad shape. Or if you just run into some bad luck along the way, accidents, illnesses, it’s the same. You won’t be running marathons and lifting weights. You may have trouble getting up the stairs. You may have trouble just getting out of bed. You may have trouble getting used to hurting all the time. And it isn’t likely to get better as the years go on. The compensations of getting old, such as they are, aren’t in the field of athletic prowess. I think that’s why the saying and the poster annoy me so much. They’re not only insulting to sissies, they’re beside the point. I’d like a poster showing two old people with stooped backs and arthritic hands and time-worn faces sitting talking, deep, deep in conversation. And the slogan would be: Old Age Is Not for the Young.
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters - Ursula K. Le Guin
People are so obsessed with not aging that they ironically end up aging horribly. A lot of tiktokers are finding out the products that they used to “keep themselves young” in their 20s did the exact opposite. It’s like babe you’re 22 what aging are you concerned about? In the grand scheme of things you just left your cocoon. These makeup, anti-aging, and skin care industries need to be held accountable. They’re brainwashing people into thinking they need this or they’ll age like milk.
The mothers
only pray
to get
Lawyers
Doctors
Presidents
and
Engineers
then
the world
stares on,
finding it hard
to give us all our daily havocs,
for the rest
of our lives.
Some are whores
and
gigolos
so you
marry them at
your own
risk
that when you
find them
extramarital
you know that
this was it,
the destiny thing.
Myself is crippling me,
myself is a critic that always it has to find a negative thing to say about me.
Myself is fear and the purpose of me has always been to overcome it.
art by @kmcvisuals
