AGE IS ONLY A NUMBER

 

A series of essays….

HERE’S TO THE JOY OF LIVING A FULL LIFE AND THINKING YOUNG

Courtesy of GettyImages.com

….as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Mom always had a simple rule for her four kids that allowed us to beat the odds, keep our sanity, and overcome many adversities. I suppose one could call it, mind over matter. She believed that your mind could out best your physical self by the shear willpower one places behind their mental ability to convince themselves that an opposite reaction holds greater validity. At best, she could be quite a good teacher at having willpower overcome physical obstacles.

I think it was because Mom didn’t drive and Dad worked away from home for most of the week that her survival instincts while raising the four of us necessitated a unique balance between reality and spirituality. Her charms shone brightly out of the necessity of having to survive just like her own Mother who left Ukraine seeking a better life while in her early twenties and proceeded to raise thirteen children in her new country, the USA.

We walked to perform many functions, even in the middle of the frigid Indiana winter months, such as grocery shopping while pulling the Radio Flyer through the snow in order to bring our basic acquisitions home. Literally shaking in my fake-fur-top boots, lips turning blue, Mom would tell us to stop shivering and instruct our brains to embrace a warm, inner peace, allowing the sun to shine down through the top of our heads and penetrate our bodies with its warmth. Amazingly, my five-year-old brain could concede of this notion and I would stop my shivering for the amount of time it took to run into the manufactured heat of our cozy kitchen.

Applying some of these same principles into my teen and adult life, I’ve often found them to be helpful and inspiring just as Mom’s spirit and character endeared her to everyone who met her. She taught me how to take charge of my life, reach out for anything I wanted and go for it, whether it be good grades, talking with others and making new friends, or interviewing for a job and feeling confident about securing it.

Considering that the mind is truly the most powerful asset we possess as functioning, intelligent beings, we learn throughout our life that if we can control its power through shear will, we can accomplish many things: weight management, learning a new skill, standing tall in our own beliefs, and how to control our own shivering whether it be out of fear or our bodies fighting back from the cold. 

Just as a house comes to life when filled with many people — we ‘Baby Boomers’ are filling the ranks of the senior population and creating a necessity for new products, ideas and ways of thinking, and the adjustment of how aging is perceived. Cavalier Boomers retire with an attitude of ‘now is my time to break the norm and begin to live.’ Understanding that new adventures can be just around the corner, along with the lifting of harsh COVID-19 rules, the mind is allowed to roam free, once again. As delusional as it may sound, it might be healthy to pretend you’re younger than you really are.

Markus Wettstein, a psychologist at Humboldt University of Berlin, conducted a study this past April where he concluded that “People who feel younger are healthier and remain healthier over time.” If you’re not yet in that feeling young frame of mind, you may want to think about engaging in physical activities (for example, pickle ball) to combating negative ageist stereotypes. This may include eliminating the word OLD from your primary vocabulary. Especially when there are so many ways to feel YOUNG! Inserting mind over matter may be a brilliant ticket to success when it comes to combating the aging process.

You might begin by asking yourself, “How old do I feel?” Research shows that many adults feel a few years to decades younger, and this may be a good thing. Most adults are not guided by the small aches and pains of aging, but rather disallow them to take over their lives. By doing so, they are allowing their chronological age to become just another number. 

I’ve always found that a sure way of feeling younger than you are is to hang-out with younger people. Perhaps it’s with grandchildren making TicTok videos together. Or, it may be within your workplace where you make a choice to have conversations with younger coworkers and catch-up on current events and ideas. Living in or near a college town is a must for me. Here one can take advantage of various programs and classes, enjoy the art scene including exhibitions and play productions, or simply take a walk around campus and soak in the surroundings. 

Now that I fit into the category of ‘older adults,’ I insist on believing that how I feel about my age has been changing for the better over time and adults, in general, may be feeling younger than their counterparts in the past. Interestingly, I know I have my Mother to thank for my current and healthy frame of mind. Many of my generation are allowing the sun to shine down through the top of their heads and are accepting that age has nothing to do with how good we want to feel about ourselves. The thing is, we must want to feel good about ourselves and block-out those ageist stereotypes as much as feasibly possible. 

So, each day I remember climbing a mountain in Ireland several years ago to keeping my shoulders down and back straight at all times. I refuse to curve my back and slump into an old age I am mentally not identifying with. Right now, age is only a number to me. If I remain feeling healthy, joyful, and adventurous for many years to come, I know I will have been doing something very powerful in my life.

Thank you, Mom, for teaching us that a younger subjective age can be correlated with better overall health and all we have to do is believe in the power of mind over matter; a unique balance between the gentle denial of reality and the acceptance of who we truly are or want to be.

Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline E Hughes

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