Disclosure: This is a sponsored post written on behalf of Disrupt Aging by AARP. All of the nonsense, memories, and sentimentality below is mine, though my children had a hand in making me very emotional as a person.
I’ve wondered, occasionally, what I would say to a visiting species, if they exist, coming to this planet for the first time. The closest I’ve come to this experience so far is obviously having children, but I suspect they’re far more abstract, aloof, and absurd than your average alien citizen.
Where would I even begin? How would I describe our nature as human beings? And what would be the most embarrassing part of that explanation? I mean, who wants to tell them we push our faces together as a sign of affection or leak water out of our eyes like a slow-drip sprinkler system when we encounter deep-seated feelings?
When I catch the lines in my face, the darkened circles around my eyes, or the changing contours of my hairline in the mirror, some days I feel like I’ve earned these changes in me. Others, it feels like a punishment for a life hard-lived. But to explain being human requires, I think, starting with the end. I might offer up, “To know us, is to understand there’s this linear process we typically follow and always find ourselves wanting to defy. We age and die.” I guess at that point I could describe a star going dark to give them some idea of it, still not having any real sense of what that means. But I’m pretty proficient at speaking about things I don’t understand.
Can we recalibrate the concept of aging?
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a lunch organized by AARP, an organization, let’s face it, that you put off knowing much about until you reach the age for it. Sort of like a colonoscopy, but way more intriguing. Floored by the depth of the conversation and the relevance their organization had for me, even at my “spry” age of 37-years-old, I was reconsidering my perception of their brand. As they put it, they’re looking to disrupt aging and the conversations we’re having around the entire process. As someone who lives in Los Angeles, the youth culture capital of the world, I was here for it in a big way.
Sitting by my father as he passed away at the youthful age of 59, I have a vested interest in recalibrating our thoughts on growing old, especially my own.
Though I can objectively speak on death and the process of deteriorating, the personal side of it feels so much more nuanced. “I’m not a young man anymore,” is something I tell myself when I find my body and mind slip in any way. “It’s okay to let yourself take a break” is also what I tell myself when I hit those proverbial walls facing me in time, effort, or focus. Carrying literal and figurative heavy loads has been instilled in men for generations. The belt of time from your teens to your 20s to your mid-thirties is an asteroid field of learning and mistakes.
I wasn’t meant to act my age, so I don’t.
My relationship to aging and the elderly swung wildly in every direction over the years, especially in the past ten when I was grounded from a wandering flight through life without children. These little anchors in time showed me the presence and profoundness of moments. And it’ll only get more intense for my little boys. Data these days states they have a 50% chance of living to at least 104 years-old. We seem to predicate so much of our worth on the faster, bigger, stronger elements in us. I want my children to look at their aging as a collection of wisdom and experience, not aches and failing bodily systems.
If you’ve ever considered your age or thought about what it means to be an adult, I recommend checking out the work AARP is doing. They’re asking, for lack of a better word, timely questions and working to overturn the narrow perception we have about aging and generational culture. It’s time we stop piling on about how terrible it is to grow old. Consider this: what would the aliens think?
This, right here, is life on earth. It’s both varied and monochromatic. Linear and phased. Our consciousness jumps while our chronology remains incremental. But we can change the way we look at the path our bodies take through the cosmos.
For more information about AARP and the work they’re doing to reshape our conversation about age, please go check out AARP’s website and social media channels:
Website: https://www.disruptaging.org
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DisruptAging
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disruptaging/
• Check out the Hashtag: #DadsDisruptAging
