You Are Too Old to Assume That All Changes Are Signs of Slowing Down
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
This morning, right about the time I woke up ( 3:45 am, no alarm necessary), I came across the meme, above. Of course I laughed, because it’s funny. But.
With respect to
, who had posted it, I disagree with this for one reason: my entire brand is around we are never too old EVER, period. Stay with me here, I’m going somewhere with this.Look, I get the humor, and remember what it was like to head out to dance all night long at discos in my (wasted) youth. However, there’s this: one thing that may well change for you as you age into your sixties is your circadian rhythm, or when you naturally wake.
Change isn’t necessarily bad, most especially changes as they relate to an evolving body. I chose that adjective because we have such negative energy around an aging body. I simply want to gently call this out and ask some pointed questions about how we frame things as we live them.
Some context:
I have always been an early rising farm girl like my father; my mother and big brother were natural night owls. My eyes flew open at 5:30 am and I bounded out of bed like a spring bunny. I know, immensely annoying, but some of us are built like that.
In fall of 2016, the year I turned 63, my sleep pattern shifted two hours earlier. Whaa?
REALLY??????
I did the research. I wasn’t alone.
Now I was waking up naturally between 3:30 and 4:30 am, like it or not, regardless of what time I went to bed.
Like it or not.
Some others wake up two hours later. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason, and it sure isn’t a function of habits or getting older per se, as in slowing down due to age. It’s also not at all universal, just to some of us. Luck of the lottery, if you will.
The body simply shifts. In some, as in this article, it’s an issue of cataracts and how the aging brain reads light. I don’t have cataracts, but this makes some sense for those who do.
I’ve got more energy than three people, so it’s not a matter of age-related slowing down. It has everything to do with those rhythms. Now I leap out of bed around 3-4 am every day, which means I better go to bed around 7:30 so that I get all the requisite hours.
On one hand I miss early evening activities. No more dinners or dates (hell I haven’t been on a date since 1776 anyway), late movies, dancing or well, anything.
On the other, waking up much earlier has given me years of extraordinarily productive quiet time long before the world wakes up. I have learned to adore those silent hours and to revel in the me-time that happens when nobody calls or tweets or makes demands on your brain.
NO noise. NO notifications. NADA.
While this wasn’t at 4 am, here’s what
had to say about no notifications:
I get my best writing and exercising done during those hours. When I am on adventures, I’m the one who finds the massive porcupine investigating the kitchen pots and pans in the mess tent before the guides get up for coffee. I’m the one who gets to see the animals wandering around before human activity sends them packing.
Those are gifts. Unbelievable, amazing gifts. Not losses.
When we see changes as losses, as we are wont to do because of ageism, we miss the opportunity to revel in what’s just been given us.
Again, I get the humor, but I would offer this: as we age and our bodies change, I would challenge labeling those changes as “just getting older” and slowing down like a rusty old car.
For some, that’s true. If we don’t mind our bodies, brains and attitudes, we will indeed rust, as many are doing starting around thirty these days.
However I offer that we are developing, not deteriorating.
We are becoming something different, new, and in so many ways, very exciting. Especially if we can let go of the unnecessary negativity about those changes.
As you and I age, our bodies are changing at a faster rate than we ever did as babies and toddlers. Those are developments. Words matter. They matter a great deal, for every imaginable reason.
In 2010 I wrote a triple prize-winning book about the power of words called Wordfood. If anything in the ensuing years I’ve watched the power of that message ring even more true, as I’ve read research on the immense importance of attitude as it relates to aging.
How we speak to ourselves and others matters more than we can imagine.
You and I are WAY Too Old to berate ourselves for aging, rather than celebrate the fact that we’re still in the game, and game for whatever comes.
The body’s swift-moving developments are downright fascinating. When we’re curious about them, and are open to what happens FOR us (not TO us) as a result of those changes, that changes everything.
Rather than fear how we change, or mock it, let’s be curious and open about it. Let’s be interested in how those changes offer us insight and understanding into our physical selves, and how that allows us to be more fully in the world.
I’m not going to try to convince you that some age-related changes are good when they are deeply painful, debilitating or otherwise heartbreaking. That would insult the reality of many, including myself, for an older life can indeed involve losses of agency, or disease.
But young or old, we are always undergoing such changes from job loss to bankruptcy to divorce, to deaths of family or friends.
No age is free from such things. To believe that to be young is to be free of grief is among the most offensive lies we tell ourselves.
Tell any child who has suffered incest or other trauma that their childhood was “carefree.”
I dare you to do it. You know it’s not true. That’s ageist in its own way, arguing a past that never existed, to justify being angry or resentful about a now that does.
Life is just life. Being young or old or middle-aged, every day is full of life. What we choose to do with it is up to us, albeit it takes a good long time for us to grow into that realization. Our youth need to see that wisdom modeled by those who have lived long enough.
As for waking up so damned early?
I get to witness the very first light, the very first birds, be the one whose face is graced by the earliest breezes of morning.
Of course one of these days that black bear who rips down my suet feeders and I are going to run smack into each other at 4 am but that’s another story.
I get to see the first sun painted on the great firs in my back yard.
It’s not for everyone. But it’s not to be feared, or mocked, either.
Like all of us I get a good solid laugh out of memes which make fun of the inevitable aspects of aging. I make fun of myself, my dentures, my grey pubic hair and every other change that marks my passage into Goddesshood.
But by god I honor those developments and changes.
They are proof of life, of longevity, of hanging in there.
I embrace them, because, well, consider the options. When I change the conversation inside me, I change the effects of that narrative on me, my attitude, my joy, and my love of life .
I would have that for you. I would have that for you and much more.
So yes laugh, but let’s laugh with ourselves and not mock ourselves with implicit judgment for evolving. Let’s celebrate the developments, and not demean who we are becoming.
We are worth loving at any age.
Let’s play.
Thank you so kindly for reading my work. I hope you got value, and hope you are able to bless every single moment of every single day you are given.
I'm a fellow believer in you're never too old. If curious, do come see a two-minute video of me standing on my head at the age of 80. I am now 82, but still stand on my head. And I love being old – it's so much better than being young. I even wrote a book about it with the same title as my Substack.
Lovely article, Julia, and I can certainly relate. Although my early morning rise (sometimes at 04:00 or 04:30) is caused by the cat circus starting here 🙈 and often involving racing across me 🙄 Never a dull moment here 🤭