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Our
society confuses age for
aged. Your age is an accident caused by the calendar. People do not
become aged
at the same rates.
There
is a condition called
Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) or premature aging where
the body
ages early. In extreme cases young people in their teens can die of old
age
from this condition, science has just located the gene associated with
HGPS.
Most of us do not suffer from any such condition.
Our
attitudes, self-perception
and expectations, on the other hand, may cause similar warping of the
time
line. When we were about thirty we went house hunting. There was a two
story
house we looked at. We started to talk with the realtor. The couple
before us
had looked at the house, saw the stairs and said "we are too old for a
house with all of those stairs." They were in their twenties.
A
few years later we were with a
group of people we know with children the same age as our children. We
went as
a group to a water park. The other parents would not go on the water
slide
because they were too old.
After
turning fifty we have been
white water rafting and kayaking on wild rivers in Alaska and the
Dominican
Republic. We have slid on cables across gorges a half mile up in the
air. In addition
we have been snorkeling, hiked and slid down waterfalls and much more.
On
our Alaska trip we were the
oldest people in the group. When we went kayaking on the Nanana
River,
outside Denali,
the rest of our group was staying in the calmest parts of the river,
while we
hit the most exciting rapids. They believed that we could attempt
anything.
On
our most recent trip, we were
paired with people that were twenty or more years younger than us. The
age did
not make a difference. We did the same activities, sometime we took the
more
strenuous activities. We should mention that we are also overweight and
out of
shape. Yet none of these made a difference.
Chronological
age is based on
the calendar. Becoming old is a state of mind. There was a tribe in
South
America that believed that the older you got the better you got. If
they wanted
to get a message to the next village they would send it by a twenty
year old
runner. If the message was more important they would send a thirty year
old
runner. If the message was urgent they would send a fifty year old
runner. The
sixty and seventy year old men were too valuable to be spared as
messengers,
they were placed on the mountain tops as lookouts since they had the
most acute
eye sight.
The
older people got in this culture
the better they got. Their physical bodies as well as their minds grew
more
skilled as the aged. The entire culture believed this and so they
created the
reality. We can do the same.
We
all know that there are many
things that get better over time. Some things need to age just to
become
useful. Infants, for example, are completely dependent. By the time
they get to
be teenagers that are completely independent and know everything.
From
that time on our education
is to teach us limitations. Many of the limitations are artificial. At
one time
we thought that all athletes peaked in their twenties. By their
thirties their
careers ended. Today, professional athletes continue their careers into
their
forties and fifties. We have even seen professional athletes hitting
their peak
after sever illness, like cancer.
Like
cheese,
wine, sauerkraut, paint and much more, requires time or aging to become
useful.
We too get better with time. Once we overcome the brainwashing from
books,
movies and television, we can realize our potential. Remember, when you
were
very young and a person of thirty was considered ancient. By the age of
sixty,
people were to be bald, feeble, toothless and senile. We all know
people in
their sixties and seventies who are extremely vital.
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