Pat Taub
I think I will tear my hair out if one more person asks me, “How’s your bucket list coming alone?” The implication is that I’m running out of time to see Morocco, jump out of an airplane, learn Italian or any number of demanding feats.
Yours truly in anti-bucket list mode
If I were to answer, “The hell with a bucket list!” in all likelihood I’d be considered a failure at aging where the model for “successful aging” is to act as young as possible, breathlessly filling my later years with age-defying adventures. The AARP reflects this trend with their images of the 80-year-old who rock climbs at dizzying heights, the 91-year-old marathon runner, or elderly couples on safari staring down wild animals.
No life-threatening safaris for my advancing years!
I gave up on a bucket list because it feels like too much pressure to devote my later years to a checklist of exhausting activities.
I want to spend my dotage not ignoring my part to join in meaningful social action but where the bulk of my days are devoted to reading, blogging, undemanding travel and meaningful conversations with dear friends. I don’t want to bungee jump at 75 to astonish friends and family. I want society’s expectations for aging to honor my slowing down and not force me to act as if 75 is the new 55 when it isn’t.
Rather than rock climb in my dotage I prefer to deepen my ties with close women friends
Why can’t we see images of aging women and men who are more like you and me?
Instead of an older woman blissfully working in her garden or laughing with close friends, the media promotes 98-year-old Tao Porchon-Lynch bending her body into challenging yoga poses. Let’s face it: Porchon-Lynch is an outlier–just as Jane Fonda’s wrinkle-free face is hardly the face of an 81-year-old woman.
The prevailing images of elders flying airplanes or racing cars represent the anti-aging industry, which is essentially death-denying. We live in a society obsessed with being young, reluctant to embrace images of older adults unless they act young. As long as older adults appear youthful, they’re not in their last chapter where death is on the horizon.
A fear of death promotes aging devoted to youthful-accented bucket lists
We’re not doing the next generation any favors if we fudge our aging. We owe it to them to be real about aging where we don’t pretend to have young, flexible bodies that can hike for hours but instead show them that just because we’ve slowed down our lives don’t lack meaning.
Fortunately there’s an emerging trend among older adults to write about the pleasures of aging where daily life is not punctuated with eyebrow-raising accomplishments. Diana Athill, the recently deceased British editor and memoirist describes the quiet pleasures of her later years when the peace of mind so urgently pursued in one’s younger years is an every day occurrence.
Diana Athill devoted her 90’s to writing two memoirs about aging which celebrate an elder’s contemplative life
We need to have conversations with younger adults demonstrating to them that old age still holds a strong desire to keep learning and growing, but with a different focus, often in pursuit of deepening our spiritual beliefs.
Alexandra Merrill, a very wise 80 year-old woman once told me that her life is now devoted to the following questions:
What must I still learn?
What is there to teach?
What do I need to pass on?
How can I still be of service?
How can I use my remaining years in the service of compassion?
For me, the search for personal meaning is the true adventure of aging where I hone my life experiences for a deep appreciation of what living has taught me. At the same time I look for ways to support young people as they take on the world’s challenges.
I guess I have a bucket list after all. It’s just a little different from the standard model.
I want to spend my old age strengthening my spiritual beliefs
