Aging with Grace

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Mark Twain

I took the photo of this portrait at the Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism exhibit at the Denver Art Museum in 2020. For some, this could be a painting of a goal for retirement, just looking beautiful, relaxing on a chaise, doing nothing of importance. A few years ago the painting might have been of gray haired, grandma and grandpa sitting in rockers on the front porch.

Today, many of us are still working well into our seventies and beyond. I’m not sure if seventy really is the new sixty. I do believe we live more active lives than our parents or grandparents. When we do retire, we don’t, necessarily, slow down. We travel, volunteer, take up new hobbies.

I worked until I was seventy and worried that when I retired my age would catch up with me and I would become one of those old people sitting in a rocker on the porch. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. As it turns out, in many ways, age is, “Just a state of mind.”

I believe one of the keys to aging well is keeping busy. When I get up in the morning, I sit done with my planner and a cup of coffee. I look at what I have going on that day and what I want to accomplish. I check off what I’ve done and move what I haven’t finished to another day. I realize this doesn’t work for everyone. Find something that suits you. Just don’t retire from life when you retire from your job.