Excellent essay in today’s New York Times How to Be Old by Roger Rosenblatt. He offers some advice to seniors that I have excerpted a portion below…There are thousands of articles, videos and media offering life advice to those whose vast experience and life lessons should make them invulnerable to unnecessary guidance.
Don’t forget to bestow confidence. It’s the best thing you can give someone you love. Saying “You can do it” to a loved one in a situation in which that person has self-doubt — taking an exam, making a speech, writing a poem — means more than any sweet profession of affection.
Don’t share despair. Not even with your friends. Not that they won’t sympathize. It’s just too much to ask of someone dear to you to bear your burdens.
Look only at the rim. Disregard the impediments to your well-being — a noisy neighbor, a treacherous colleague — and concentrate instead on where you are headed.
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Turning 74 next month, here is my philosophy guiding my actions and thinking for the next few years (?) or decade (?)
1. Close the circle. Stay in touch and communicate with family members and friends who reciprocate with their interest. If possible, visit them or call. If your relationship is based on text messages and infrequent e-mails. Close friendships are like marriage, “till death do us part.”
2. Avoid nursing homes, hospitals and doctors in that order. Their focus is not so much on improving your life but treating you as if you are on your way to death.
3. Watch movies and TV shows produced before 2020. Listen to the music made before the 1990s. Feeling patriotic, read about American history that occurred before 1945.
4. If I watch a sporting event, movie or TV show that lasts more than two hours from my recliner, I should expect to miss half of it.
5. Don’t vote! I have probably voted 55 times or more. Given the state of our country and the lack of leadership nationally and locally, I can’t think of any activity that has produced less desired results. I would also recommend that at a certain point, seniors avoid being involved in politics, or even having a great interest in them. Now, I speak as someone with no heirs or grandchildren, so my opinion is a bit self-serving.
6. Avoid most advice on money, diets, exercise, life insurance and aging. Including this one..
Esot-eric 