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when I was young, the thought of being old terrified me. I found old people annoying, and assumed that they were all terribly sad and afraid as they experienced their body breaking down until they died. I felt so sorry for them.
Now, I am old. I honestly love how I look! Those lines referred to as "crows feet" have always reminded me of sparkling stars, particularly when someone smiles. I have tons of them and I love them [ in my thirties I was constantly scrunching my face up in front of a mirror to hurry them up] I love that I have finally learned how to dress. I love all of the free time. I love that people are SO much more accepting of old me than they were of young me.
I LOVE my mounds. at one time there were huge snakes tacked to my chest. Even during my very short stint as a playboy bunny, they were grotesquely huge and flabby. With my reconstructed mounds[ after a double mastectomy when diagnosed with cancer] they are nicely shaped and I do not even need to wear a bra!
when I was young I thought that old people must all be bored out of their minds. Now, I still have to schedule a small portion of "adulting" into my schedule, but mostly, holy cow, it's picking out how I want to play when there are so many options available.
When I was young, I thought most old people must feel useless. I know that I have never been so excited about "changing the world" now, than I have ever.
I am blessed to still have my husband, and I love spending time with him. As far as the "intimate" togetherness part, well, it's been a looooooong time since 3 times a night, but every time is incredible.
When I was not young, but younger than I am now, I had 3 HUGE worries. I worried about what would happen to my kids and husband after I died. Well, I started a yearly autistic retreat that my son is learning to coordinate , am putting together an Autistic community so that he will always be around understanding people who are similar to himself. My husband prefers Autistic to non-Autistic people, so he'll be okay.
I was terrified when just a few years ago I had a net worth of negative $300,000 dollars.[ trying to find a cure for a loved one] now, well, we are doing fine [no inheritance. no lottery win, no government dole]
I was terrified about getting sick, winding up in the hospital, and being sent to a nursing home because of my "differentness." when I am in uncomfortable surroundings I totally shut down. I rock, I flap, I echoliate, I twitch, I cry, I chew on my toes, and then I act very weird. I am no longer worried about this because I have 2 notes on record from therapists stating that my weirdness is MY normal, expected and that I'll return to my happy quircky self as soon as I can go home.
so, what I thought would be a terrible time in my life is actually pretty awesome. how have your expectations of old age changed for the better and/or the worse since reaching this stage in life?
For me, old has always been people my parents age, so it is a bit of a moving target - but no, I am not old. Slower? Yes. Old? No.
At 20 I couldn't imagine being in my 50's, now that I am in my 50's, I couldn't imagine being in my 20's. I have enjoyed each stage of life, and have no desire to turn back the clock, but then, I am in good health (aside from being fat), and have had an interesting life and fulfilling career IMO.
It is amazing how much we learn and experience in a lifetime, and how little youth values that experience and wisdom - I was perhaps the smartest person on the planet in my 20's , and looking back, I am amazed I could have ever been so ignorant and brash.
Being old gave me the gift of self determination. I get to decide what to do, who I want to do it with, where to live, and how to spend or save. What freedom!
After spending decades as someone's daughter, work slave, and wife, I finally get to be what I want to be!
when I was young, the thought of being old terrified me. I found old people annoying, and assumed that they were all terribly sad and afraid as they experienced their body breaking down until they died. I felt so sorry for them.
These are, no doubt, the best years so far. Finally, the time and the means to enjoy myself. But I still find many old people annoying. They talk too much about themselves.
I am getting old myself. Still I don't like old people very much for all the reasons mentioned and then some: boring, smell bad, plenty of them lack ambition, don't have any goals, and seem like they are just waiting to die. Looks are way secondary.
Still I don't like old people very much for all the reasons mentioned and then some: boring, smell bad, plenty of them lack ambition, don't have any goals, and seem like they are just waiting to die. Looks are way secondary.
Wow! I would not even use some of your terms to describe even the worst-looking/behaving old folks in skid rows or nursing home!!!!!
I have a lot of respect and admiration to all the older folks that I have known in my life, my parents, grand parents, elderly neighbors, the old priest who counseled and married us, old timers at work who possess institutional knowledge, years of experience, and even some old immigrant janitors at work!
There is a spectrum of personality, intelligence, ambition etc. in ALL age group. A person does not change and become boring just because he or she is old. If you dismiss old people based on their looks and don't get to know them to know more about their life, their experience then of course you will find them boring.
Regarding ambition and goals in old ages, if someone still possesses a lot of desires or spunk, good for them. If not, IMO, old people are entitled to take it easy. They had worked or struggled all their life to make a living, to raise their children or even grand children. They can relax, just happy and content with their current life status. What's wrong with that?
Yes, I have known some old folks who are just waiting to die. Some has poor health. Some suffers from depression induced by life medication, dementia or just life circumstances (losing their loved ones, friends died off, family estrangement etc.). It's sad but if you can not do anything to help them, why not just pity them instead of disliking them?
I have had quite a few older or elderly friends in my life. Some were my mentors. Some are my role models. I had learned so much from them. Many had imparted on me their life wisdom and had shared many fascinating life stories from bygone eras.
So my perception of old people when I was young has not changed over the years. Now that have joined the retired set with my official retirement last November, I can now experience my very favorable opinion of a senior life ;-)
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P.S.
Here is the links to webpages of or about some of my fascinating elderly friends/acquaintances
Note: I would never forget the opportunity to sit next to Cpt. Miller during a Christmas dinner to learn about his amazing flying career. He told me that he learned to fly from a book and became a commercial pilot after his very first self-taught flight (a farmer saw him landed in a field and offer him some money to be his 1st passenger).
Note: I had the privilege of having Howard teaching me wind surfing and told me about his transformation from a burn-out, ill-health overweight engineer/manager to a fitness guru and sport/life enthusiast in his retirement after his physical examination at the age of 55. I met Howard when he was 83 and he did not look a day older than 60 at the most!
When I was young...
I grew up among a group of very interesting older people who at the time bored me to death, but now I am grateful for everything they taught me about friendship, commitment, and dignity.
My mother wasn't a good mother, but she was a very well-educated and interesting person and she had a group of very devoted and diverse friends. Likewise for my father. So I fortunately never bought into the whole stinky boring old person paradigm. I was exposed at an early age to a very eclectic group of people from various areas of public service, the arts, collectors, and writers.
One of my most lasting memories of a much older person was of my great aunt who grew up partly in Mexico partly in Indiana, lived in Tokyo during WW2, was a musical savant, Washington hostess, widow to two admirals, friend to presidential wives (and mistresses), and who still had a boyfriend when she died at almost 100. Some life. I wish I had spent more time with her.
Even as I write this, I am amazed at how normal all this seemed at the time, and now at this point in time, I am left reexamining my childhood in a different light.
When I was young in a small town in a rural area, in addition to my relatives, I experienced the older people on my very long paper route, and later working in one of the village drug stores. So, I met a lot of people...people my parents' age were "grown ups" and people my grandparents' age were "old."
Most old people were just old people. But then there were those people the same age as old people, whose age kind of blurred and even virtually disappeared. They were wonders.
My mother's stepmother, Marietta, who had come down from Canada was one. She lived in a neat crossroads village in the hills south of us. She had endless letters and family news to talk about...and family was her family, my dead grandmother's family and my grandfather's family (hundreds and hundreds of people), and her stories had no end, she narrated a saga...she drove my aunt nuts, and my mother had to strap on a seat belt. Marietta put together Cornish missionaries, cattlemen in the Dakotas, an exploding dynamite factory, a botched 1890's abortion scandal, the sourpusses in the Ontario Orange Order, my cuckolded granduncle's murderous revenge...and she wove them in and out and made it all fit together, while she held the latest "letter from Canada" in her hand...like Proust and his madeleine cake. I realize that this grandmother was another Proust or Galsworthy before I knew who those guys were. She's been dead half a century and now that I got deep into family genealogy, I remember her ongoing convoluted narrative, and I remember the schemes and dreams of these folks who are names on a chart, and how they connived, submitted, rebelled, killed, survived, denounced, declaimed and died...and my grandmother's bemusement over our human foibles. Never judgmental, but endlessly good-natured and accepting of human folly.
My other grandmother was just old, though such was the stuff of her life that she could have been like my other grandmother, but she hadn't that spark.
When I was in my early twenties I went to NYC to work, and one of the people I met was Franklin, a man in his mid-to late seventies. He was the most fascinating person I knew at the time. He had been in imperial China, his father had been one of Woodrow Wilson's cabinet secretaries, he's sold art in London and New York, he lived a gilded life in the Roaring Twenties, and had Broadway songwriters, the ex-spouses of maharajas and all manner celebrities for friends.
What my grandmother and this man (and some others of their age that I met) had in common was their attitude that life was like a Dim Sum luncheon...didn't matter what you liked or didn't, there was always more coming, and it was all endlessly interesting and even amazing.
But "Old People" who were their same age had just spent their lives eating oatmeal and drinking bad coffee it seemed.
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, and looking back, I am amazed I could have ever been so ignorant and brash. 
