I’m bombarded daily with how to “combat aging” or “look younger.” And it’s not just about living a healthier, better life but turning back the clock and trying to recapture our youth.
Like aging isn’t a thing we want to happen.
Here’s the truth – I want to live my best possible life and Third Age. That means doing what I can to protect my health, mindset, and more so I can age the best way I can. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value the experience, wisdom, and life I’ve lived already either.
We used to value aging as a society, but around the 1960s that started to change to the youth-obsessed culture we have now. How do we learn to age our best when we were never taught how?
We look at the cultural history of Aging in America with Lawrence R. Samuel.
The Cult of Youth
To understand how we can change something, we need to understand how it came about to be in the first place.
Lawrence R. Samuel takes us through the history of the culture around aging and the rise of our obsession with youth.
It used to be that we valued and revered those who had lived long lives. Now, we treat any signs of aging as a source of shame that should be masked and prevented.
How did we get here?
Samuel answers that question and traces the changes in our society that led us to where we are now.
The consequences? We have an entire generation of Third Agers that don’t know how to age well because we’ve never been taught.
We Need to Know How to Age Well
My favorite take away from Samuel’s book is that our youth-obsessed culture has robbed us of understanding how to age well.
With “getting old” viewed as cognitive and physical decline, we get rampant ageism and discrimination in the workplace. We get marginalized in our lives. Worst – we believe the stories we’re told and don’t know how to take care of ourselves.
This is honestly why I started Third Age Mojo. I wanted to learn how I personally could age my best and build a community of Third Agers who could support each other through this journey.
And that’s exactly what Samuel recommends. If we want to change the perception of aging in America, we have to first change it within ourselves and then band together as a community to make that change happen.
Get motivated to do just that by reading Aging in America now.
