Act Your Age!

As a child, I remember parents and others telling me to “act my age” — usually when they thought my behavior seemed immature — sometimes when they felt I was reaching too far beyond what was appropriate for my age. But what does it mean to “act my age” now as an older person who has retired from my career? Should I reflect on my accomplishments, provide wisdom to youth, and otherwise rest, as some believe? A recent event forced me to think about that.

This past Thanksgiving my husband and I took two of our grandchildren out for brunch the day after the big feast. It gave us an opportunity to talk with them and to hear how they are doing without lots of friends and family around.

We had a great time talking together. They are bright, talented young adults, both in college, and we were eager to hear about their classes, their college social life, and their plans for the future. They shared their thoughts and ideas with us, and we were supportive, complimentary, and asked many questions.

They asked about us as well and we mainly provided updates about minor health issues and future travel plans. I think we focused on these because we believed these were the topics they anticipated we would talk about.

 But as I listened to them I felt a stirring in my mind and emotions, a feeling that at this point in my life I was not that different from them. I too have aspirations and enthusiasms for my future. These plans don’t involve developing a life-long career plan nor finding a partner, thankfully, but they seem exciting to me, and I no longer feel the pressure of having to make the “right” decisions. I am taking Spanish classes to improve my conversational Spanish, and hope to get good enough to do volunteer work with Hispanic immigrants. I also started this blog, that helps me express and find humor in this stage of life, and I enjoy sharing my thoughts with others. There are also places I want to explore and books I want to read that I never had time for before. And I look forward to making plans for new activities and explorations.

Some psychosocial theorists call my stage of life late adulthood, usually considered to start at age 65. As I have indicated before, dear reader, I am fortunate in being healthy and financially stable, I have no caretaker responsibilities, and thus I can choose how I wish to spend my time.

As I started to think about the time ahead, I looked into what has been written about this stage of life to see how it applies to me, and perhaps find some guidance. One of the early theoreticians who wrote about late adulthood was Erik Erikson, who described late adulthood as the final stage of life, from age 65 to death. He described this as a period of looking back on one’s accomplishments and either feeling satisfied or disappointed, or as he called it, developing a sense of integrity or despair. I do some of that looking back, but I find I am more interested in looking forward, to what I hope to do in the future. Some may say I have not yet learned to “act my age” — but that’s fine with me. I believe that as it is my age, I want to fully own what I do with it. I am also pleased to see that more recent views of late adulthood make important distinctions in aging between 65 and later years, and some focus on the importance of undertaking new activities; that all sounds more in line with my own plans.

But are my feelings narcissistic and self-indulgent? Isn’t it too late to start following some of these interests? Has my time for exploration and excitement about life’s possibilities come and gone? Sitting with my grandchildren that day I almost felt embarrassed at my thoughts about new explorations, like it was something I shouldn’t be doing at my age, like wearing mini-skirts or using too much eye makeup.

But why not?

After we parted that day and I started heading back home I realized that just asking this question made me feel free to experience the pleasure I was getting out of these new pursuits, and to begin planning more. It also made me realize that even folks in late adulthood could choose to wear mini-skirts and lots of eye make-up. Why not indeed!