Nelson - Happy Healthy. . .Dead: Why What You Think You Know About Aging Is Wrong and How To Get It RIght

Contents

PART I

What You Need to Know

CHAPTER ONE

Meet The Real Un-Dead: Happy Healthy Centenarians

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

I travel a great deal for work. One day I was on a plane, the flight attendant had gone through her safety-procedures routine, including the usual airplane-mode only during take-off announcement. The young man next to me, well ensconced in his window-seat and ear-buds, continued to text. I figured perhaps he hadnt heard the announcement, so as the attendants closed the doors, I leaned towards him and said, Were taking off. You need to put your phone in airplane mode. He barely glanced at me, and continued to click away. The plane started down the runway. I repeated myself, Uh, hello! You need to switch to airplane mode. Your phones signal could interfere with the pilots radio frequencies. Its not safe.

The young man shot me a disdainful look and said, What would you know? Youre ooold. That stopped me cold. Then I replied, If youre lucky, if youre very, very lucky, youll get to be old like me. Mind you, I hadnt yet turned 60.

That is where the problem lies. Most of us want to live a long life, but very few of us want to actually get old. Or as my young friend on the plane said, ooold.

I remember my grandmothersboth my grandmothers, for that matterand both of them, by their late 50s, were considered old. They were expected to do no more than sit quietly, placid, while the world moved around them, a role they accepted without protest. My maternal grandmother would crochet little dresses for our dolls. My dads mom would fuss as my mother put it. Shed squint through her reading glasses, looking for something to dust or re-arrange, getting up slowly every so often to do so. They were to be spared any hard work or aggravation. Dont bother your grandmother! was the most frequent refrain we children heard during family get-togethers.

Thats changed, have you noticed? 60 may not be the new 40, and who knows if 70 is the new 50, but one thing is for sure: were living longer, and most of us are refusing the sedentary veg-til-you-die approach to our later years.

A long happy, healthy life. Thats what were aiming for, arent we? With yogurt and yoga, and brain games. I take ballet and fully expect to be dancing on YouTube at 90. Why not? Ill call it, The wrinkled ballerina takes the floor.

And yet, when people are asked, Have you planned for retirement? or What are your concerns for your future after retirement? just about everyone says, How will I be able to pay all those health costs? As if the great majority of us expect to spend all those years after retirement in a continually progressive debilitated state, finally ending up in a hospital, sprouting tubes: the inevitable finale to that ever-more-painful lingering decline towards death.

How utterly and totally depressing! Granted, no one gets out of here alive, but lets at least live until its time to die. Let our emphasis be on how happy we can make ourselves and our lives, such that our focus is on happy, healthy with dead being but a final punctuation mark.

Our mental pictures of anyone over 75 are pathetic. And over 80, 90, 100even worse. Television is rife with ads promoting cures or solace for the infirmities that we are all supposedly doomed to as we age: Alzheimers, incontinence, diabetic neuralgia, chronic pain and ill health, the need for wheelchairs, walkers. Were told that without an electronic device slung around our necks to summon help, well crumple to the ground from a heart attack and die there: wretched, alone and in agony!

Its no wonder that no one wants to grow old, that old age scares the heck out of us. And yet, as I told the young man in the plane, we who live long lives are the lucky ones! The survivors, those who made it, so to speak, past the perilous 20s, ambitious 30s and 40s, the questioning 50s and beyond.

This is not to say that there arent some older individuals who suffer from Alzheimers, severe cognitive impairment, arthritic joints, broken hips and a whole host of other afflictions, but there are far more individuals in their 10s, 20s, 30s and 40s who are dealing with a variety of disorders such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, deformed or amputated limbs, an astonishing array of injuries from various accidents, and cognitive issues of all kinds.

The difference is that we dont automatically assign an entire class of individuals to certain misery just by virtue of their ageexcept for the elderly. Past the age of 65, and certainly by the time you hit 75, pretty much everyone expects you to need a walker, be diabetic, and have heart issues.

This, despite the fact that according to the 2011 US Census Bureaus report, only 3.1 percent of the total population 65 years and over live in a nursing home.

And again, despite the fact that well-known figures such as:

Clint Eastwood, at 84, directed the award-winning American Sniper and Jersey Boys movies, both released in 2014.

Angela Lansbury, at 89, toured England and the United States in 2014, in the title role of Noel Cowards Blithe Spirit for which she had received a Tony in 2009.

Dick Van Dyke, at 88, completed work on Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb in 2014, and starred in a music video for folk music band Dustbowl Revival in 2015at 89.

Betty White, at 89 and 90, received the 2011 and 2012 Screen Actors Guild awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series ( Hot in Cleveland ), and whose Great American Country special Betty Whites Smartest Animals in America aired on her birthday in January 2015at 93.

Norman Lear, at 93, still fulfilling his bucket list. Latest on the agenda? He lip-synched a song by Paul Hipp in a funny, touching YouTube salute to his 93 rd birthday. Lear, best known for his TV producer success ( All in the Family , The Jeffersons , Maude among others), continues to pursue his long standing passionthe promotion of active and thoughtful American citizenship.

Lest you think you have to be in show business to live a long, happy, productive life, theres Henry Kissinger. In 2014 at 91, Kissinger published his most recent of over a dozen books on politics and international relations, World Order (New York, Penguin Press), and continues to be active in a number of groups and think tanks concerned with foreign relations, among other activities.

Then there are those individuals who are not so well known:

Phyllis Sues celebrated her 92 nd birthday in 2015 by performing an amazing tango which was uploaded to YouTube amid great acclaim. Considering that Sues began taking tango (and trapeze) at 80, thats quite something. Oh, and did I mention she learned Italian and French in her 70s?

BKS Iyengar, a master teacher, was photographed at 95 doing his yoga stances. He was one of the foremost names in yoga, training such luminaries as violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Madonna and the Queen of Belgium. His achievement is all the more astonishing given that he was born in 1918 during an influenza epidemic and was a weak, malnourished child whose many illnesses included malaria, tuberculosis and typhoid.