The End of the Snow and the Beginning of New Ideas

What an unbelievable week. From feet of snow and ice - burst pipes in homes and moorages [my moorage included ] to pot luck dinners with friends, from hard to navigate roads to: TA DA - a night of warm rain and now no snow in sight! It went away that fast....

Even the spring bulbs that had started growing in our warm Fall are perky and green - that after being covered with ice and snow for the week. Now we do the fixing up and I have figured out how to replumb the kitchen without pulling up a floor board or 2 or 3 which would have to await warm weather. Got the idea from a neighbor - the crawl space between roof and ceiling!

It's hard to think outside a box and in this case the box is that most have homes here have the plumbing under the floors and therefore close to the river. It took a mention of pipes in the "attic" to joggle my brain...and it's not age related at all....it's that we think first along lines similar to what we see on a daily basis or along familiar thought patterns.

The message is that we need to let the imagination run free and imagine what can be - not what is....it's something I think we all need more practice doing....

The "fat and uglies"

I had a good friend, one of those who died last year, who would say she was having "one of those fat and ugly" days. She was neither fat nor ugly but I knew what she meant - [after all :-) we were both psychologists.]

Thought of her the other day - probably as I have an old medicine bottle she once gave me and I was dusting it...

I passed the 1/2 year mark recently and I've begun to think I have had some of "those unfit and old" days. I'm not unfit but I might be "old." How do I or we define old? I'm teaching a lifespan class this summer and it's been fun to hear what students label "old" - but even their definitions have changed as they have read thru the text.

Are you only as old as you feel? or act? And if so, that can change every day or even a few times a day. Or do we take the average or the median as a measure? I don't know - but I sure know we don't take the "real number" - just as in the good old days - we never were really fat and ugly.....

Here's a question, and some variants, to ponder

What is old age? Or - when does old age start? Or even this: Is there really such a "thing" as old age?

I have taught life span development many times over the decades and it's a question that came up [and comes] up in college classes and now it's popping up among other populations - even among those who might be considered to be "in" their old age.

I have heard many 20-somethings talk about "those poor senior citizens" who collect social security. The "seniors" are often described as infirm, unable to work and otherwise to be pitied. These same 20-somethings most likely come into contact with those over 65 - who are still working, still active and hardly pitiable...but the 20-somethings do not see those over-65ers as being over 65.

So when are you old? Is it an age determination? or is it something else?

When I was a "young kid" a few years removed from graduate school - many of the local psychology professors were beginning to think and write about aging but few had really started studying it. One such psychologist jokingly said that only when we all got older would psychologists start really understanding older ages. I think she was right.

Studying older and aging populations is relatively new...and defining old age keeps changing...

Me? I hate the term "old age." It has no real meaning. We do not speak of childhood as "new age" or junior - so why label some as old age or senior? I much prefer "old fart" - it stops people in their tracks - annoys some and makes many laugh... I ask for my old fart discount when I go to a particular store on what I call old fart Wednesdays - when we old farts get a 10% discount.

Birthdays

I have a birthday coming up this month...funny, but birthdays have no real meaning anymore. I think once you hit a certain age - and I am not sure which it is - only birthdays with 5's or 0's at the end seem to have meaning..

Does that mean we think in 5 years cycles as we age? Or is it that "others" use those number markers to keep track of where we are. I'm an age now I once thought was "old" but that's true of most ages. When I was really young I thought 25 or 30 was ancient. When a friend was here recently and were we skiing - I asked if we would still be skiing when we were old. Neither of us thought that was an odd question :)

Growing older better may mean we forget about the number we are and keep on keeping on - doing what we do!

So - keep on keeping on!!!