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IT’S THE GOLDEN AGE OF IRONY

By May 26, 2015March 6th, 2021Culture, Longevity

Growing older is confounded by misapprehensions, contradictions, ironies and age-inappropriateness. The sooner we can correct these bad attitudes and actions and get back to when longevity rules, the sooner we can slap a cease-and-desist order on manufacturers and marketers of “anti-aging” products.

To get started, here are some topics for discussion and possible reconciliation:

No one wants to grow old. No one wants to die young.

No one wants to grow old. Everyone wants to live longer.

“Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.” Jonathan Swift

We spend our lives collecting memories only to lose them as we grow older.

Ageism will go away only when those of us who are unaffected by this injustice become as indignant as those who are.

“When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, ‘If this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.’” – Steven Wright

A 2002 Yale University study found that older adults who have a positive perception of aging live on average 7.5 years longer – a bigger increase than those associated with exercising or not smoking.

Everyone is “aging” from birth. Yet this active verb is attached to those of us closer to the end of the process than the beginning.

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” — Satchel Paige

Those who decide it’s better to age at home, often do so alone. Yet, isolation and lack of socialization are proven to be unhealthy and attributed to a shorter lifespan.

You don’t know what you’ve got (or want or need) till it’s gone. Surveys of healthy people routinely report an overwhelming desire to age at home. Yet, has there ever been a survey of residents of older adult communities to retroactively compare on contrast their desire when they were younger and healthier?

“It’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years that counts.” — Adlai Stevenson

The same demographic TV shows continue to stereotype older adults as feeble, incompetent and irrelevant are the primary viewers of intellectual and news programming.

Why are there more opportunities than opportunists when it comes to marketing to the 78 million Boomers?

Necessity is the mother of invention, but come on, tennis balls on the legs of walkers, still?

It is oxymoronic to market a product or service as “anti-aging.” Face it, Melanie Griffith, Mickey Rourke, etc., aging in plain sight is far classier than hiding behind a mask for the rest of your life.

 

 

 

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