The benefi ts of aging
Curmudgeon’s
Corner
IVAN RACONTEUR • EDITOR
There must be hundreds of benefi ts
to getting older, but for the life of me,
I can’t think of any of them.
I’m joking of course.
The subject of aging came up re-
cently when a colleague and I were
commiserating about some of the
negative consequences of getting
older.
There are, however, benefi ts as
well.
Personal space is one of them. I’ve
noticed even at a crowded pub I am
rarely suffocated by hordes of la-
dies craving my attention these days.
When one gets older, people tend to
keep a respectful distance.
Speaking of ladies, another ben-
efi t to a sprinkling of white hair is
that strangers are more comfortable
around me.
I’m not sure if it’s because they as-
sume I have reached the stage at which
I no longer pose a threat, or because
they are confi dent they could outrun
me in the unlikely event I should give
chase.
In any event, getting older makes
one less threatening to strangers.
When I was young, I sometimes
encountered ladies who were aggres-
sively competitive.
Whether it was sports or some
other activity, they were determined
to turn it into a competition.
That is no longer the case.
Today when I encounter young la-
dies, they are more likely to hold a
door for me or offer to help than to
challenge me.
It hasn’t quite got to the point where
they are offering to assist me in cross-
ing busy streets, but it is defi nitely
much less competitive than when I
was younger.
I’m less likely to get into any se-
rious trouble now than when I was
younger, too.
I’d like to say this is because I am
wiser now.
The real reason, of course, is that
even though I still have a penchant for
mischief, I lack the essential energy I
10
once had. In other words, I still have
the capacity to devise schemes, but I
don’t often have the energy to execute
them.
Also, late at night (or early in the
morning) when trouble often occurs,
I’m much more likely to be reading
a book or sawing logs than prowling
the streets getting into scrapes.
Another thing I have noticed is that
it is easy for me to learn new things
every day.
I regret that some of these are
things that I had learned previously
and forgotten, but we can’t have ev-
erything.
I seem to do OK with the big
things, but the small things can trip
me up. I’ve never been very good at
remembering names, and I am less
good at it now. Fortunately, I’m also
less worried about offending people
when I forget their names. As long as
one of us remembers, everything will
be fi ne.
I have reasonable success remem-
bering facts, but I sometimes forget
why I walked into a room. “Destina-
sia,” they call that. This used to both-
er me, but over time I have learned
to wait patiently for inspiration or
retrace my steps. I fi gure if the rea-
son for being there was important, I’ll
eventually remember what it was.
Life tends to be less stressful as we
get older.
When we’re young, it seems like
we are always having to prove some-
thing.
We’re
busy
climbing ladders
and building our
lives, not to men-
tion fi guring out
who we are.
As we get old-
er, we know who
we are, and we’re
comfortable with
that. We accept
ourselves and oth-
ers, which allows
us to relax and
enjoy life more.
There’s gener-
ally much less
drama in our
lives when we get
older.
Young people
are earnest all the
time. They treat
the simplest situ-
ations as life and
death emergencies.
Older people don’t get sucked into
that kind of thing.
We become experts at what young
people describe as “chillaxing.”
Most of us, with each passing year,
care less about what others think,
and spend more time and energy on
things we fi nd important.
We get better at prioritizing as we
age.
When we’re young, we might try
to solve all of the world’s problems,
and that is a lot to ask of ourselves. As
we get older, we learn to focus our ef-
forts, which allows us to concentrate
on making our little corner of the
world better.
It is more diffi cult to think of phys-
ical advantages of getting older.
I suppose it’s a perk that other peo-
ple’s expectations for us go down as
we age, in correlation to our declin-
ing abilities.
There comes a point when no one
realistically expects us to run any-
where, ever.
Even though we can still lift heavy
objects and carry things, people are
less likely to ask us to actually do so
as time goes on.
These days, if someone asks me to
help them move, they probably want
me to take care of the beer, rather
than heft a bunch of heavy furniture.
I won’t go so far as to say getting
older is fun, or that there are a lot of
perks, but it is probably better than
the alternative.
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