Living life longer by embracing old age

It doesn’t matter how old you grow, you always end up looking out at life through the same eyes – which means that it’s often only in the mirror that you have to acknowledge the effect of the passage of time.

How many times do you proclaim – jokingly or otherwise – that you still feel like you did when you were 18?

Of course, you don’t feel anything like that, because the joints give you aches and the back gives you pains and the memory plays tricks on you. And sometimes those eyes can’t see too far past your nose.

But in attitude, you still think you’re starting out instead of staring at what’s left of the journey from well past the brow of the hill.

And it’s not delusion either, because feeling young truly does help you stay a little younger – although partying like you’ve just sat your Leaving Cert when in reality it was a lifetime ago isn’t really what we had in mind.

The truth is that we spend half our lives pretending we’re older – particularly when it comes to getting into pubs or nightclubs – and the other half shaving years off to cod ourselves and others into thinking we’re still in the second flush of youth.

And there’s nothing wrong with that – because while we outwardly might be showing the mileage, inwardly we’re still the owners of a gleaming new engine.

Age isn’t just like counting the rings on the bark of a tree; sometimes it’s just a number sent to slow us down – only some people deliberately decide to ignore the signals.

I know of people who retired at 65 and might as well have given up the ghost as soon as they got the gold watch – and I know of others who saw the end of work as the removal of shackles so they could finally do what they wanted to do.

I also know of people who have never grown up – and this isn’t always a good thing, because there are few sadder sights that some old guy trying to pretend he’s still in the first flush, hanging out in bars where his age adds up to the combined age of any three others in there.

Still, better to be an older person thinking they’re still young than a young fogey who acts like they’re almost looking forward to shuffling off into the sunset.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.