Aging Gracefully

I just read something I really like.  It is by an Anthropologist called Ashley Montagu.  “The goal of life is to die young — as late as possible!”
It may just be different ways of saying the same thing, with new bits added every now and then, but I really have a passion for older people.  I reckon they get a raw deal.
It is a fact of life that the body grows old.  Merril was going for a run and this fit young person ran by.  All Merril could think was “your time will come.”  They say, “youth is wasted on the young.”  It is my thinking that it does not need to be.  I reckon enjoy it while you can, but don’t take it for granted.
I was never told it would be this way.  That as I got older my body would deteriorate and things I took for granted would be either no longer possible, or a lot harder to do.  I do not think young people should obsess with getting old but where possible, not take youth for granted.
Part of the key for me is what we hear so often. “They are young at heart.”  While an aging body is inevitable, an aging mind is not.  The mind should grow wiser, but it should not stop growing.  Give up.  Act like it is just waiting to die.
To me that is a cop out.  I ask myself, “who said I was past it?”  That may be an idea promoted in society, but just because something is stated does not make it true.  So many ideas come and go.  I saw something on tv last night that was calling into question a “truism” held for over 40 years.  It was about the amount of water we need to survive.
The point for me is, so many ideas come and go.  It astounds me that older people are suddenly seen as potentially useful employees.  That was not promoted until covid decimated the employee ranks.  It was always true, but conveniently dismissed until older people were needed.
I guess what I do not want to see and will actively promote the opposite, is seeing older people write themselves off as useless.  This probably dove-tails into what I have experienced since the stroke.  For sure I cannot do what I did (a combination of stroke and older age) but I can still do heaps.  For me it is about concentrating on what I can do and not what I can’t.  There is actually more than a lifetime of activities I still can do.
Ok I used to wander into the sea with my bait under my cap and fish.  That way I cooled off and fished at the same time.  The last time I wandered into the sea though I have never been so disoriented in my life.  I now need to cool off and fish a different way rather than wandering into the sea and giving up on everything because I now feel disoriented in that situation.
The point for me is, maybe I cannot do some things I once did but there is still heaps I can do.  I hear so many say, “my body may be older, but in my mind I do not feel any different.”  To me there is so much concentration on “I can’t,” when the truth is there is so much “I can.”