THE FOUNTAIN OF AGE

Many who are old may wish they were young again.
Then again, others would rather not either relive their past, or be young in this day and age.
Reporter Kerry Hannon wrote an article on aging in the June 29, 2014, edition of USA Today.
Paul Irving, president of the Milken Institute, has a collection of essays on aging from experts across America, titled “The Upside of Aging: Long Life Is Changing the World of Health, Work, Innovation, Policy and Purpose.” Hannon used these essays to source the article.
“The common spine of their discussions is finding creative solutions to a range of issues from age-friendly housing alternatives and transportation systems to lifelong learning and socially focused encore careers,” Hannon writes.
Let’s start our discussion by paraphrasing baseball great Satchel Paige: “how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”
Would you want to be 30 again? How about 20? If you are in those age groups, you’ll think about this later in life. Prepare now to live a good, long life and be healthy, wealthy and wise.
If you are somewhat older, closer to retirement, how do you feel about your job? Does it give you any pleasure? Are you counting the days when you could retire?
“Every person will have the opportunity to be ‘right’ for his or her personalized aging,” writes Pinchas Cohen, dean of the USC-Davis School of Gerontology. In other words, we won’t all age the same way. Some of us will have different health challenges. Some of us will work until we die – here’s hoping that you love your work that much. Still, others will struggle financially and others will struggle to find enough to do when they stop working.
Many will feel forced into a situation that they had no control over, i.e. their employer “retires” them before they wanted to go. Though we can’t control those situations, we can control how we proceed after something happens.
The one advantage to being young today is having the time to plan to get older. We can’t anticipate every curve ball someone will throw, but we can have the ability to either catch it, or hit it out of the park when it comes our way. Everyone should presume to be thrown curve balls at inconvenient times.
Those with less time to plan may have to start from scratch at an age at which one should relax. There are many ways out there in which one can start from scratch, no matter what age he is now. To check out one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may see a good financial future, that can also give you time to enjoy what you love.
So don’t dread aging – embrace it. Don’t waste time and energy thinking how good life was years ago. Anticipate how good life will be years from now.
We all have different views of the past, and have different ideas for the future. Remember your past fondly, but look with great optimism to the future.
Most of us will live a good, long life. Prepare now for how you will pay for it, how you want to feel as you live it and, most importantly, how you want to enjoy it.
Peter