Preparing for our later years should not begin with assuming decline.
It should begin with refusing to let decline become the only future we can imagine.
Which Old Age Are You Preparing For?
I have been known to say that I don’t like assumptions. I find them dangerous.
And lately I’ve been thinking about one of the biggest assumptions we make without even realizing we’re making it: what old age is supposed to look like.
I saw two photographs this morning that startled me.
One was of four women I know, all in their late seventies, some approaching eighty or already there, standing on a beach in bathing suits, laughing, sun on their faces, looking very much alive in their own lives.
The other was a photograph from a retirement community, welcoming new residents.
I don’t know the people in that second photograph. I don’t know their health, their circumstances, their choices, or whether they are perfectly happy to be there. This is not about judging them.
What caught me was the contrast between the two pictures.
And I started thinking about how much of what we expect from aging comes to us through osmosis.
We see the brochures and the commercials, and we hear the conversations about downsizing, assisted living, managing decline, preparing for the day when we can no longer do this or that. Somewhere along the way, without ever consciously choosing it, a picture of old age begins to form in our minds.
And then we start preparing for that picture.
That is the part that interests me.
What if we prepared just as seriously for vitality?
What if prevention was not simply about avoiding disease later, but about protecting the quality of our lives now?
Moving our bodies now, staying curious now, keeping our strength now, continuing to make plans now, continuing to want things now, refusing to hand over pieces of our lives simply because a certain birthday has passed.
I believe deeply in prevention because prevention is not only about some future version of me. It makes my life better today.
I have also thought very seriously about how I want to live as I get older. I intend to remain exactly where I am for as long as life allows me to do so. That is not denial. It is a choice.
And maybe that is the larger question.
We are constantly told to prepare for old age.
But almost nobody asks us:
Which old age are you preparing for?
Maybe preparing for our later years should not begin with assuming decline.
Maybe it begins with refusing to let decline become the only future we can imagine.
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