With a little help from my friends who commented on the aging blogs - thank you!

I have for years delved deep into my own psyche with the hope of encountering novel insights on human nature via learning more about my own nature. And it's become a habit - when I write, that I often burrow down well under my surface thinking to try and uncover ideas that lead me to new perspectives, but which sometimes take me out of my comfort zone. Where I then have a choice between following my nose along the trail I'm trying to 'blaze' or I could claw my way back up to the surface to re-align myself with more familiar, less worrying and generally acceptable ways of viewing a subject.

Therefore, the neuroses levels rise and fall (rise and fall).

But you know, aging, for me, is not the central problem. I'm aware that it's something I've been doing since I was young. The beliefs differ when the aging process starts, some say from when we take our first breath and I recall years ago hearing about studies that pointed to the age of 12, but there does seem to be some kind of consensus on the internet, so in today's world, for around the 30 year age mark, or specifically given here - this article states that the process of aging begins at age 25 for women and age 29 for men.

If the statement is true, I've already spent over 50% of my life, aging. Kind of humbling? Well, only if I was around the 30 year age mark.

My blogs on aging first stemmed from a point of interest raised in someone else's blog, concerned with that someone resisting to take help offered with lifting something heavy, which resulted in a nasty injury. Which, in fact, could happen at any age, but the bottom line in that blog was that the injury was linked with growing old.

While my current position in respect of aging - where I'm coming from - was amplified by Braembel (on 360), which is that I hope to hold together well enough, both mentally and physically, to maintain a place in the workplace up to the time of a pensionable age (with nearly another decade to go) because I have taken a liking to having a regular income.

I'm aware of building health issues these past few years that weren't there before, and I want to stay seated in reality about this.

That others have identified my moving beyond middle age a notch into old age, won't allow me to hide from that reality anyway. But it would be nice for acceptance to seep gently, in. Instead, I had my little kick and scream - and what we perceive, we don't have to like but we do need to make what we see, palatable, to thus fathom our way through to an acceptance of changing states in mind and body.

I have been struggling to find the emotional fortitude to "see", or imagine, myself in the workplace for yet another 8 or so years when the potential for a growing physical disability looms large in my mind. And I hadn't realised how large until I started 'spilling my guts' about a negative reaction I recently had, a symptom I guess of my own fears pushing me to reject a proposition that I've mentally seen - before I'm emotionally ready to take it in.

Although, to learn that my experiences are shared by other people from my generation has been cathartic to some extent.

However, there is the prospect that the transition from one self-image to another, middle age into old age, can be seen as a struggle much like the caterpillar shedding its immature aspect to finally become the butterfly. But to find this standpoint, for many of us, we will first need to revalue upwards the outlooks we have on forevermore losing the bloom of our youth.

Growing old is reward in itself ...

i agree with Ladykatya. I don't like the alternative to growing old. I suppose growing old is the reward in itself. Wow! Pat, I did not know folks felt this way. I was always told to be the gentleman. I did these things with a genuine smile on my face, because, I really thought I was doing the right thing and it did not hurt me a bit. In fact, it made me feel quite well, knowing that I did the honorable thing and maybe made somebody's day. Our Boy Scout slogan was "Do a good turn daily." I don't know what to say. much love

jon
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Thanks for your comment, Jon.

I think if we arrive into old age without too many impediments to our enjoying life, then growing old would be its own reward .. and a just reward. I'm certainly more contented in myself than when I was younger.

And old age is still a way off for me, I don't get an OA pension until I turn 65, so I'm not ready to embrace a self-image that would cause me to become habitually, more dependent than I already am. Otherwise I'm not going to make it to pension day :)

Reading responses to the first blog in various places, I get the understanding that there could be a fairly widespread attitude among women, when we hit the half century, that we first begin to come up against signs in other people's behaviour (though well meant) that teach us to worry about whether we can take care of ourselves or not. We also become afeared of losing our independence because our bodies are signalling a decrease in power. It's a double whammy which we may well have to accustom ourselves to in, what amounts to, the blink of an eye.

It's not just men being courteous to women any more. Or young people being courteous to older people (hey it happens!) ... and men being polite makes us feel great, whatever our age, so please don't stop that {",]

When as a woman, though, I'm deferred to by another woman - a stranger, and someone whose been sitting quietly by, not being chatty, so there's no other contact that might make her say 'after you' (and we women can be pretty nice to each other too) - that woman being not that many years younger. And it comes to my attention that a pattern has begun to form here because other people have lately become strangely solicitous, then I get to wondering if I've hit the downhill slide. It's at that point, by my appearance, I feel I'm being judged as "fragile" which picture begins to erode my confidence. Two minutes before I had a residual impression of being a strapping woman of 50 plus, capable of doing hard stuff like sweeping floors and meeting work deadlines and bango(!), in my mind's eye, suddenly I'm reduced to being a doddering wreck - because my imagination is often over the top ... yes, I admit it. And, yes, if you said, Pat, you should be instead bathing in the glow of someone's kindness .. and I do, I do, in my heart of hearts. I'm glowing. Look, please see me glow *smiles*.

It's not that people being kind is not appreciated, it's not that at all, but, by the time a man undergoes exposure to these special considerations, he generally is elderly. With women, it starts earlier on - and yes as we have established it is a good thing.

But in their fifties men are still considered hale and hearty no matter that their hair is getting sparse and/or going white or grey (mine hardly is), or their bodies are going a funny shape (moving right along ...) or any other outward thing that symbolises the onset of old age approaching.

I don't know, I do wonder if, maybe, all the way through our lives we women have more adjustments to make in society, than men do, to the ways we see ourselves?

Notice, it's a question not a statement, I thank you.

We’re never too old to learn .. 8.12.07

We’re never too old to learn .. 08 Dec 2007

Rose said: "It's rough to get old. lol!" - She picked up something heavy that she'd bought at the supermarket and quite seriously hurt her back, and the young shop assistant had previously offered to get someone to assist her.

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I know how you feel, Rose.

When I catch the bus I'm prepared for people to climb on board in the order they arrive at the bus stop although I'm used to men, complete strangers, at the bus stop, saying (or intimating) "After you".

And condescension doesn't play a big role in nature in the wild. Neither may this be the natural order among humans but - moulded by civilisation - our mannerisms symbollically express our cultural preferences and even into the 21st century we've elected to role-play men acting in a way that is solicitous of women which satisfies some ethic or ethics we live by.

It's now got to the point though where women have started to say to me "After you". So same behaviour, different relationship - not male/female but younger/older. The relationship revealing as stronger/weaker, in fact, by the assumed stronger party (whether having a gender or age bias) going on "looks" to determine what the situation requires. In there, then, is someone making a judgment value.

The first time a woman said to me "After you", I declined .. no, no, no, no, that's okay, you go .. but then she became more effusive and I thought, okay, she's doing the nice thing and I'm beginning to make her feel bad. So I clambered on board feeling a bit wierd - like I felt a bit wierd when, for the first time as a young adult, a schoolgirl got up from her seat on the bus and offered it to me. Automatically, I declined the offer (no no, that's okay ...).

As a fifty something, compared to when I was twenty something, I thought I had a better understanding of the world at large, and me in it, but obviously I didn't.

In our social interactions there is a kind of "pageant" that we each have a part in, the popular voice of what we want in our society streamed through the rites and rituals we act out between us. Keeping in mind that these rites and rituals would be screened out of society were they not practised to be kept in circulation.

A first hurdle when moving from one age group to another might be the disconnection from a self-image that we've outlived. This gets harder the older we get because it involves an acceptance of a growing vulnerability - that can be felt but can also be denied. Without which acceptance, however, and in the event of help being proferred, we would not be seated in the reality of the moment and might well over-reach ourselves.

You won't be the first or the last, Rose, you can be sure of that.