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Ageing & Growing Old

Are you growing older?

  • Yes, I am

    Votes: 82 61.7%
  • No, I'm getting younger

    Votes: 28 21.1%
  • Sorry, I don't understand the question

    Votes: 16 12.0%
  • I'm a Mod; I think adding silly polls to chat threads is pointless

    Votes: 7 5.3%

  • Total voters
    133
Am I growing older? Other than dying young, is there a way to choose not to get older?

*clamps hands together. Please say yes, please say yes.*

You can think and act young, instead of becoming a miserable old fart.

Some people take a pride in being grumpy trouts. I'd rather keep active and enjoy life.
 
I'm 57 and fighting fit. If nanotech doesn't give me long life then hopefully my consciousness c.an be uploaded.Then theres also option three: I'll come back & haunt as well.

I'm 59 this month and also in rude health. Death doesn't worry me as I've already decided who I'll be haunting, on a complicated rota. A post-bucket list, if you will.
 
I dare say you act like it as well (smile). I think that's like half the secret to staying fit myself. Think and act like you're a twenty year old and there's got to be some upside to that mind set. Old age would be perfectly acceptable if it came with the body of a 20 year old and then death would be worth fighting against.

I'm over 60, just started collecting my pension a couple months ago, waiting on social security for a while yet, but about a year ago I was hit out of the blue with facial paralysis. At first they thought it was nothing and said it was obviously bells palsy and would go away. Typically in a few months. Well it's been over a year and while 90% improved it's not gone. I've since read up and it appears to be a viral infection. There's nothing they can do to help you. Going to a doctor is a complete waste of time and money with this stuff.

There can only be so many things which can cause nerves to begin to fail. Of them mine is the most desirable since it promises to maybe leave. Otherwise it's prepare for final exit. One way or the other you're leaving. Got it?

At the time it was extremely frightening and came on inside of a couple hours. I thought it was a stroke and which is a common misconception. I became concerned that I might end up unable to move so I went and put a rope around a tree and fashioned a nose with which to hang myself if it came down to it. No way in hell am I going to veg in a wheelchair or sit in a bed crapping in my drawers.

Everybody must make their own choices. I did some of my undergraduate work with a professor whom was also the chief deputy coroner for the local county, and so death is perhaps less frightening to myself. I recommend a book called Final Exit: For that day.

PS: Don't put this off. Knowing how to end your own life is as important as knowing how life is created. You don't want to screw this up. Personally I prefer just getting a copy of the book Final Exit, but for the extremely lazy....

Incredibly the book is now on video ...so much easier that way ya know.

I read a lot about Punch and Judy Professors. One said something along the lines of My body is in the sixties but sometimes, there's an eleven year old operating the controls.
 
Haunt? That's the spirit! Corny pun intended. Glad to hear you are recovering well. May you continue to do so. I lost a lung to an infection several years ago. Had emergency surgery in a last ditch effort to save my life, 'died' in recovery and was revived...remained in a coma for a few days and then came back. Some things may have came back with me...but that's another story and another thread lol
Wow. Like to read about that someday.
 
Wow. Like to read about that someday.

WOW! - Are you the famous Soul-Drifter from that other forum that was closed down by Aliens?
If so if feel better - thought I was really experiencing one of those hypothetical alien invasions we often talked about.

Never heard of this forum before but it seems cool and should attract most of the AH group soon as they hear about it.

Growing older? - Not If I can help it - Still believe we can reverse disease, aging and even death, if we put our minds to it - Sure this is easier said then done - But I will never accept our pathetic fate as ordinary Humans....

Like the famous Google executive and scientist Ray Kurzweil, I am a futurist and still look forward to the day we can upload our consciousness into a super-computer matrix giving us immortality.

========================================================

Also Soul, since your were a long time moderator on AH - What happened?????
 
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Wow. Like to read about that someday.

Maybe someday. The experience would be quite hard to put into words as some things have no comparison in the 'real' world. But I will add that I have seen things since that experience. Real or not, I don't know. I don't often speak of it because I have no desire to convince anyone...and don't wish to sound crazy lol
 
I don't often speak of it because I have no desire to convince anyone...and don't wish to sound crazy lol

Sorry (maybe not sorry) I want2believe2... I think it may already be too late for that!

Anyway, nothing wrong with crazy... It's a good thing because I've figured that the older you become, being crazy is a great way to get away with all sorts of things without people around you thinking you have gone senile with old age...
 
Sorry (maybe not sorry) I want2believe2... I think it may already be too late for that!

Anyway, nothing wrong with crazy... It's a good thing because I've figured that the older you become, being crazy is a great way to get away with all sorts of things without people around you thinking you have gone senile with old age...

craz.jpg
 
I read a lot about Punch and Judy Professors. One said something along the lines of My body is in the sixties but sometimes, there's an eleven year old operating the controls.

Oh good God yes, when it's not an eleven year old, it's a teenager. I'd prefer the teen but the mind is itself that of a spoilt brat whom pretty much get's his own way.
 
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It's been said that which is real is that which does not change.

It's also been reasoned that which does not change can not be real. Aristotle, I think. That is to say that matter remains only a potentiality until form gives it an actuality (existence). In other words, only the form that comes into being (change) exists.

Now
I sound crazy!
 
The essential trick is to age without growing up. In this usage, 'growing up' means 'to achieve some final and persistent state at which progress ends.' The point of the game isn't to grow up in the sense of achieving such a state; it's simply to grow in the sense of getting better / refining / expanding / ripening - i.e., maturing.

Once you've convinced yourself you've finally 'arrived' or you're finally 'there' or you may now 'stand pat', you've got nothing more to look forward to than sitting in the middle of the road awaiting entropy's onrushing headlights. You're welcome to be as self-satisfied as you wish while waiting, but smug roadkill is still roadkill.

I've always envisioned my own final phase (assuming I'd survived to see it ... ) as an ongoing culmination rather than a static decline. If anything, I've been looking forward to it for a half-century now.

As a teen, I closed one of my poetry pieces with a line I'm still proud of:

"The succor of age is bounty come due."

In my late twenties, my then-wife would smile knowingly, shake her head in tut-tut style, and tell me I was already a quite weird (and dirty) old man who just hadn't fully grown into the role yet.

In my thirties, I finally grasped, and adopted as gospel, the motto of the 65 Club at the University of California Law School:

"Youth and skill are no match for old age and treachery."

Now, in my sixties, I'm still outrunning and outgunning younger colleagues in my chosen field of endeavor. The mass of experience, prior lessons learned, etc., accumulated over decades makes this incredibly easier now than it was then.

The cherry on top is that they now call me 'sir' and hold the door for me.

The most important thing to aspire to isn't wealth, toys, fame, etc. It's simply 'slack' (lack of pressure; wiggle room; flexibility; free choice).

The 'slack' entailed in being a valued contributor on my own terms hanging out at home is, IMHO, the most significant bounty that came due.

Keep it coming! ... :pipe:
 
The essential trick is to age without growing up. In this usage, 'growing up' means 'to achieve some final and persistent state at which progress ends.' The point of the game isn't to grow up in the sense of achieving such a state; it's simply to grow in the sense of getting better / refining / expanding / ripening - i.e., maturing.

Once you've convinced yourself you've finally 'arrived' or you're finally 'there' or you may now 'stand pat', you've got nothing more to look forward to than sitting in the middle of the road awaiting entropy's onrushing headlights. You're welcome to be as self-satisfied as you wish while waiting, but smug roadkill is still roadkill.

I've always envisioned my own final phase (assuming I'd survived to see it ... ) as an ongoing culmination rather than a static decline. If anything, I've been looking forward to it for a half-century now.

As a teen, I closed one of my poetry pieces with a line I'm still proud of:

"The succor of age is bounty come due."

In my late twenties, my then-wife would smile knowingly, shake her head in tut-tut style, and tell me I was already a quite weird (and dirty) old man who just hadn't fully grown into the role yet.

In my thirties, I finally grasped, and adopted as gospel, the motto of the 65 Club at the University of California Law School:

"Youth and skill are no match for old age and treachery."

Now, in my sixties, I'm still outrunning and outgunning younger colleagues in my chosen field of endeavor. The mass of experience, prior lessons learned, etc., accumulated over decades makes this incredibly easier now than it was then.

The cherry on top is that they now call me 'sir' and hold the door for me.

The most important thing to aspire to isn't wealth, toys, fame, etc. It's simply 'slack' (lack of pressure; wiggle room; flexibility; free choice).

The 'slack' entailed in being a valued contributor on my own terms hanging out at home is, IMHO, the most significant bounty that came due.

Keep it coming! ... :pipe:

I think the best part is that having grown into yourself, you no longer give a shit what others say or think of you. It's like water off a ducks back.
 
The most important thing to aspire to isn't wealth, toys, fame, etc. It's simply 'slack' (lack of pressure; wiggle room; flexibility; free choice).

The 'slack' entailed in being a valued contributor on my own terms hanging out at home is, IMHO, the most significant bounty that came due.

Keep it coming! ... :pipe:
Slack, you say? Wise words.
30852fadd3deaecf6975d5c41cfb1786.jpg
 
My son came home from university yesterday for summer break, and while I was carrying his bag into the house, I was reminded strongly of my own father, carrying my bags into the house when I came home from university.

My father, at the time, seemed a lot older to me than I feel right now.

One thing I've learned about being older is that older people were never fooled by anything I said or did. My own parents certainly knew more than they let on, just as my wife and I know a lot more than we let on to our children. We don't want to give them any advantages! Lol.

I often say: "Just because I don't yell it when I step in it, it doesn't mean I didn't know what it was."
 
My son came home from university yesterday for summer break, and while I was carrying his bag into the house, I was reminded strongly of my own father, carrying my bags into the house when I came home from university.

My father, at the time, seemed a lot older to me than I feel right now.

One thing I've learned about being older is that older people were never fooled by anything I said or did. My own parents certainly knew more than they let on, just as my wife and I know a lot more than we let on to our children. We don't want to give them any advantages! Lol.

I often say: "Just because I don't yell it when I step in it, it doesn't mean I didn't know what it was."

LOL...Well that's true enough.

Life happens: The soul eternal. Life is like a playground, but with a purpose, and like children we ourselves are not likely to be aware of all that is known by our own soul.

This is not a one shot deal. The materia in which our souls inhabit is forever in a fluxing state of matter creation/destruction. You cannot have a learning process, or new experiences, if you allow a rigged game.
Our own soul may know why and what the purpose of our life here is, but it is we ourselves whom have
forbidden any foreknowledge or access to the adult process.
 
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