36. Aging Gracefully
Recently, I ran into someone I had not seen in almost 20 years.
“Wow,” he said, “you haven’t changed a bit!” My temptation was to
say what I thought, that he looked mucholder than his age. But dare
I? Here I was, a professional, seeing someone I would want to help.
Certainly, if he were down in the street bleeding to death, I would do
what was necessary to help revive him. If starving, I would give him
something nourishing to eat. But now, would my comment be misin-
terpreted as being judgmental?
The real point I want to make is that we all age differently, but not
randomly; we have a lot to say about the process. I made the choiceto
follow a path of healthy aging, and my old friend chose a different
path. We all have to make that decision, every day, whether con-
sciously or not.
The marketplace is full of “anti-aging” scams: powders, pills and
potions that claim to stop aging, which, of course can’t be done.
Cosmetic companies make products with chemicals that attempt to
cover the effects of aging. These companies make billions of dollars
on products that don’t work. Instead, the dangerous synthetic com-
pounds contained in virtually all of them actually can increaseaging.
Graceful aging is what we all want. The age-old yearning to be
youthful is to have a body full of vigor and a vibrant brain; basically,
by being optimally fit and healthy. Before asking my friend if he was
feeling OK, he said, “It’s so nice to run into you again... I need to get
healthy... I can’t keep feeling this way.. .” He was making the right
choice. “It’s never too late,” I added.
Each of us has two different ages. Chronological age refers to how
young or old we are by the calendar; physiological age refers to how
young or old we are relative to average chronological ages. When
comparing a person’s physiological with chronological age, we find