Old Age Can Be the Best Time

Too many of us believe the illusion that growing old means living in a nursing home, losing one's mental acuity, or abandoning activities that gave pleasure throughout a lifetime.

Contrary to widespread belief, only 5% of the population will end up in nursing homes. The majority of elders remain in their own homes. Most are able to maintain themselves, occasionally needing help when doing things such as shopping or preparing food.

Statistics also indicate that healthy older adults can learn anything that a younger person can. The main difference is in learning style. While children can absorb all kinds of information at the same time, older people learn best when they're focused and are interested in the subject.

Finally, there is no need to abandon enjoyable activities; most can be pursued at any age. In fact, almost every older adults did some kind of exercise, read extensively, and kept up with the news.

Physical activity helps facilitates healthy aging. A woman in her nineties explains: "I walk at least a mile a day, usually two. When it rains, I walk in my apartment corridor." Mental stimulation is important too. Old age can be the time to do things one never had time for when busy with raising a family or making a living.

Finally there's a need for emotional support. Relationships with others help elders remain engaged with the world around them and with life itself.

Adapted from Healthy Aging, Dr. Marge Blaine

Talking about Aging

Every one of us experiencing aging. Advancing age may seem to many of us as a scaring phenomenon of a lifecycle. Human born, growing as a child, teenager, adult, and facing the next process. Am I talking something hateful? I hope not. Aging is something natural and we can shift our manner from 'we have to face it' to 'we will face it with smile.' We are not alone with this aging things. Trees, earth, sky, piramids, birds, apartments, teenagers in school, etc. …, we are becoming older and older. It is very usual and natural. So, I think we don’t need to evade this curious thing.

All we need to do for the first time is: just feel free to think about aging. It is not something scary or ghastly look. It is our friend, something accompany every thing in this vast universe. No need to make him/her enemy. Even, we need to know him/her better.

People think about season cycle: spring, summer, autumn, and fall. Or daily sun cycle: dawn, morning, noon, evening. Yeah, eventually everything will walk through the same process.

So what can we do to happily being aging ones, knowing that we are not the same as we were at the old days.

The question is whether we are mindful about ourselves, knowing this aging body. By knowing what happens, we can take a good steps to face this aging life, this old earth and this old self. Take an example: We plant a seed of herb. After some times, we watched how the seed was growing so beautiful, showing the pretty flowers or fruits. We can help the herb maintain its lifecycle longer than if we don’t try to care it better.

It means we can save our life longer and better via awareness of ourselves. So what are the good steps of it? Here are:

Take care of your body. Don’t put waste or toxin in your body. Let your body flow in this natural scheme as much as possible. You have two legs, they are created for human to walks. So, give your legs enough chance to walk in your days. You have kidney. So don’t overburden it with unnatural drinking. Your kidney loves water. It was specifically not created to accept unnatural substances (think about soda, chemical substance, etc.)