A friend of mine on Facebook posted the photo above. It’s of a newspaper article that redefines age. In case it’s too hard to read, let me tell you what it says. The World Health Organization has set forth the following categories based on average health quality and life expectancy:

• 0-17 years old: underage
• 18-65 years old: youth or young people
• 66-79 years old: middle aged
• 80-99 years old : elderly or senior
•  100+ years old : long-lived elderly

Well, well. This is definitely food for thought. And it does validate some things. For example, I have a lot of friends still working, many full-time, well into their sixties. They are running marathons and their grandkids find it hard to keep up with them. I have no idea how old anyone is. Hair dye and more disposable income to buy trendy, flattering clothing has allowed people to maintain a youthful appearance. Gone are the grammas of my youth; white haired old ladies wearing baggy house dresses, support hose and sensible shoes. Their lives were so much harder than our mothers’ lives were, and our mothers’ lives were much harder than ours. Of course their life experiences shaped them. And the culture of their lives shaped them too. Few women diverged from the roles society placed on them. Grammas sat in rocking chairs with grandbabies or great-grandbabies in their laps. They cooked and knitted and stayed close to home. Nowadays, grandmothers and great-grandmothers travel the world or go on road trips in their new model convertibles. They wear designer clothes, organize and attend demonstrations and drink and dance the nights away. They may still hold babies in their laps and they may sit in rocking chairs while they’re doing that, but when the babies and their parents go home, those grammas get up and go to the office where they run corporations. Life is different now, times are different and women are empowered to be who they want to be. And for many of us in our fifties and beyond, we have the health and the wealth we need to live the kinds of lives we want to live.

So, I think the article is right, to an extent. I’m 58 and have been told I look younger but I don’t feel “young”. Some days I feel every minute of those 58 years; when my knees force me to go slowly and awkwardly up and down the stairs, when my left arm aches from carrying my grandson around or when a day of travelling reduces me to a snivelling sack of exhausted nerves.  And don’t even get me started on the dangers of sneezing, coughing or laughing suddenly, before I have the time to cross my legs. I have a young outlook on life in many ways but I also feel those 58 years have given me some measure of wisdom and insight that young people lack. Of course, there are some pretty mature “youngsters” and some pretty close-minded, offensive “oldsters” out there. I am, of necessity, speaking in generalizations.

I would be happy to be called “middle-aged”, after all, the odds are not in my favour that I will live past 100 so technically I’m past middle age. I have made peace with my life expectancy. I’ve lived a good life so far. I have a good marriage. I have loved well and been well loved. I helped raised two children who successfully went out into the world to live their own lives, and who occasionally call or come to visit. I had a career that allowed me to make a positive difference in people’s lives, and some of them have reached out to tell me that. I have old friends and new friends and I look forward to spending time with them. I’ve travelled to some amazing places and have plans to visit more. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready for my life to end, but if it did, I’d be okay with that. Of course I would do whatever I could to fill my remaining days with as much as possible given, of course, that I had notice.  I’m not sure that’s how a young person would feel. That’s why I don’t feel young, that and the sneezing stuff.

Compared to our previous generations, we boomers have had it pretty good. And now as we enter the last phase of our lives, we are reaping the benefits of the times we lived in. Most of us are relatively healthy and have the means to continue our lifestyles well into our later years. Of course, we’ll be living in ranchers, not three storey townhouses. We will have to make concessions but the quality of our lives makes us seem younger than our parents were at our age. However, I would like to ask clerks to stop calling me “miss” or “young lady”, that just feels ridiculous to me. I am clearly not young and those sobriquets feel condescending. I feel I’ve earned the respect of “ma’am”. Getting old isn’t something to avoid. Sure there are things about aging that aren’t all that great, but not getting older is worse.