At 93, I am in full agreement with your observations about adapting, and it gets more challenging as your body can no longer do things we used to take for granted. For my entire life I have loved walking and hiking. But today I am exhausted after walking a single block, and last month I lost my driver’s licence. We have no choice but to adapt, but it becomes more challenging for each month. But, despite the ever increasing challenges, I am still revelling the life experience and consider myself a great winner in the lottery of life. But I would enjoy a good night’s sleep.
I love hiking as well but we've not been doing a lot lately. Frank has a meniscus problem so we don't want to overdo. He is the hiking leader so we are taking a break, while I keep riding Peloton. A partnership adaptation.
It is wonderful to see my own thought patterns, reflections and musings reflected in good writing Robyn. It’s affirming and validating but also helpful in navigating my thinking (and concerns) about being older. Thank you
Thanks, Liana, especially for the story about the 80-year-old woman. It really hit home for me. I wonder some days whether I am fighting aging or being fit in preparation for aging. But I love the feeling of being fit and strong. So I'll keep going while I can, adjusting as I go.
I really like this perspective because it shifts the conversation away from loss and toward choice. The older I get, the more I realize that life isn't asking us to surrender who we are, but to keep adjusting with a little more wisdom, patience, and humour. Those small, deliberate changes often become the very things that help us keep moving forward with purpose.
"We adapt deliberately… or we adapt by gradually expecting less of life and less of ourselves." That distinction is soooo sharp, both paths are adaptation, but only one of them is chosen. My favourite detail is the house-sitting experiment: actually testing whether city life still fits instead of assuming the answer. Treating your own later life as something you're allowed to prototype. Couldn't get enough of this piece!!
Thanks so much for your kind words Deniz. It seems to have hit a nerve. We are absolutely loving the city experiment. Going home today so we can do our weights session in the morning with our Physio and then back for another week before the young ones get back from their European holiday.
This is what I believe people say when they use the phrase “Common Sense”. Common sense isn’t a thing or a state of mind, it is the ability to use what you know and have experienced in a different application or environment. A child raised on a farm in Montana will struggle with common sense tasks if dropped on a street in Harlem. Similarly, the child raised in Harlem will struggle with common sense tasks if dropped in a pasture in Montana.
When people utter “X doesn’t have any Common Sense”, they are in fact saying “that’s not how I would have done it”.
At 93, I am in full agreement with your observations about adapting, and it gets more challenging as your body can no longer do things we used to take for granted. For my entire life I have loved walking and hiking. But today I am exhausted after walking a single block, and last month I lost my driver’s licence. We have no choice but to adapt, but it becomes more challenging for each month. But, despite the ever increasing challenges, I am still revelling the life experience and consider myself a great winner in the lottery of life. But I would enjoy a good night’s sleep.
I love hiking as well but we've not been doing a lot lately. Frank has a meniscus problem so we don't want to overdo. He is the hiking leader so we are taking a break, while I keep riding Peloton. A partnership adaptation.
It is wonderful to see my own thought patterns, reflections and musings reflected in good writing Robyn. It’s affirming and validating but also helpful in navigating my thinking (and concerns) about being older. Thank you
Thanks, Liana, especially for the story about the 80-year-old woman. It really hit home for me. I wonder some days whether I am fighting aging or being fit in preparation for aging. But I love the feeling of being fit and strong. So I'll keep going while I can, adjusting as I go.
I really like this perspective because it shifts the conversation away from loss and toward choice. The older I get, the more I realize that life isn't asking us to surrender who we are, but to keep adjusting with a little more wisdom, patience, and humour. Those small, deliberate changes often become the very things that help us keep moving forward with purpose.
@stacksave
Spot on Roberta. I am so grateful to have a lovely community of writers and readers to share ideas with. Thank you.
I absolutely agree. This is what I wrote about in Resiliance in the Fourth Age. Well said.
Thank you Patricia. I love that we have so many different aging perspectives in our Substack community.
"We adapt deliberately… or we adapt by gradually expecting less of life and less of ourselves." That distinction is soooo sharp, both paths are adaptation, but only one of them is chosen. My favourite detail is the house-sitting experiment: actually testing whether city life still fits instead of assuming the answer. Treating your own later life as something you're allowed to prototype. Couldn't get enough of this piece!!
Thanks so much for your kind words Deniz. It seems to have hit a nerve. We are absolutely loving the city experiment. Going home today so we can do our weights session in the morning with our Physio and then back for another week before the young ones get back from their European holiday.
This is what I believe people say when they use the phrase “Common Sense”. Common sense isn’t a thing or a state of mind, it is the ability to use what you know and have experienced in a different application or environment. A child raised on a farm in Montana will struggle with common sense tasks if dropped on a street in Harlem. Similarly, the child raised in Harlem will struggle with common sense tasks if dropped in a pasture in Montana.
When people utter “X doesn’t have any Common Sense”, they are in fact saying “that’s not how I would have done it”.
I feel that at our age, we could write more than one story on common sense or the lack of it. Thanks for reading and joining the conversation.