Successful Aging

Browning wrote: "Grow old along with me/ the best is yet to be/ the last of life/for which the first was made." The "best is yet to be" will work out only if "the first" does what it was made for, that is,
Browning implies, to prepare for that which is "yet to be."

So many of flunk the last quarter of life's game because we've not prepared when we were younger. Primarily three things are needed in old age, and all must be set in place during middle-age, if not sooner.

1. Health. If we abuse or neglect our health when young, we are condemned to old age misery.

2. Adaptability. If we have not learned to adapt to a changing world, changing family, and changes within ourselves, we will not be prepared for the radical differences between the world of our seniority and the world of our childhood and youth. The secret of successful is adaptability and all that implies.

3. A variety of interests. If we have not developed numerous interests across the years, we may find that the changes of age may incapacitate us for our few interests. Health, location, and loss of friends among the many things that could shut down our few interests. We should have indoor and outdoor, physical and mental, individual and group interests.

So often across the years I have read advice on aging, only to find that the writer was in their forties or fifties. Maybe they know some of it, but not by direct experience. I have written this post a few days after my seventy-sixth birthday. I've seen both the failures and the successes.

"If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail."