I met a new friend the other day. I say friend lightly because we talked for maybe four minutes max. But I’ve already decided we’re going to be friends.
It started because I may or may not have unintentionally eavesdropped on their conversation and overheard her friends say, “I can’t believe you’re going to be 80.”
This made me whip around so fast I nearly threw my neck out. With my mouth on the floor, I did a double take, proceeding to interject myself in their conversation and say, “That cannot be true! I would have put you 20 years younger.”
I asked her SECRET, because that’s what we all want to know, right? And she attributed it to never smoking a cigarette a day in her life. I laughed, we all laughed, and I still don’t know if she meant it or if she was just cracking a joke.
Her friends attributed it to her spunk. To a woman who clearly LAUGHS her way through life. And that tracked. If I hadn’t already crashed their conversation, I might have pulled up a chair and invited myself to coffee. I kind of wish I did, but I thought that I might have gone far enough for one day.
Needless to say, it got me thinking. And it might only be because I’m barreling toward 40 myself that the conversations on longevity and aging are in my field of awareness. But has our relationship with aging gotten weird, or has it gotten weird?
It’s like we fully believe that we can escape it altogether.
We’re constantly being sold ways to outsmart getting older. To hack our way out of it. And most of this information is coming from generations who haven’t even lived through it. Meanwhile, the ACTUAL wisdom is sitting at a coffee shop, in on the joke, and having the time of their lives.
It got me thinking, maybe we need to spend less time chasing the next supplement and more time actually having fun with life. Even more, living life with the people who hold the wisdom of what it really looks like to not just age, but to age well. Because I can tell you, if I could be anything like my new friend Linda, growing older isn’t scary. It’s the whole point.
I’m currently determined to find her again and beg her to be on the podcast. Fingers crossed!
In the meantime, I have a question.
Is all this longevity talk making us better at aging, or just better at fearing it? Curious where you land. Let me know in the comments!