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Aging Quotes

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Aging Quotes

“Green tea may just be the most powerful of all antioxidant sources. Green tea contains polyphenols that scavenge free radicals and protect against photo damage. A 1997 presentation of University of Kansas research at the American Chemical Society national meeting found that antioxidants in green tea called catechins (a phenol) are more than 100 times more effective at neutralizing free radicals than vitamin C, and 25 times more powerful than vitamin E.”

“There is even some evidence that eating a lot of tomatoes and tomato products can prevent sunburn. A recent presentation of research at the Royal Society of Medicine in London24 revealed that participants who added 5 tablespoons of tomato paste per day to their normal diet showed a 33 percent reduced risk of sunburn after twelve weeks!”

“Whether the individuals are members of the Eisenhower Generation or the Baby Boomers, The Villages produces a culture of individual and collective youthfulness, but one paradoxically without youth. Youthfulness in these terms is not only produced through communal activities but also through the repair, development, and enhancement of the individual body itself. The programming of the strip hospital complex supports what might be termed as 'cyborgian' ambitions of the residents with respect to a broad range of treatments and products, from the biochemical and the biomechanical, to the bio-cosmetic and the psychochemical. Blechman's documentation of the 'Don Juan' of the villages, Mr. Midnight, resonates with this notion of posthuman subjecthood: 'I have to pick up my Viagra,' he says, and soon returns with a brown package. 'It's not that I need it, mind you. It's an enhancement, like whipped cream and nuts on a sundae. If it's a special night, I might take 100 milligrams.' Other 'enhancements' include the over-the-counter canned oxygen product Big Ox Power Oxygen reportedly used by residents to speed hangover recovery. These forms of experimental subjectivity and collectivity produce unforeseen effects: Doctors said sexually transmitted diseases among senior citizens are running rampant at a popular Central Florida retirement community, according to a Local 6 News report. A gynaecologist at The Villages community near Orlando, Fla., said she treats more cases of herpes and the human papilloma virus in the retirement community than she did in the city of Miami. According to the news report, local doctors attributed this predicament to the ready availability of Viagra within the community, a lack of sexual education, and the non-risk of pregnancy within the age group. It will be suggested here, however, that the broader spatiotemporal construction of The Villages, including golf carts and golf cart infrastructure, downtown public settings, and happy hours, further contribute to the social milieu that promotes enhanced intimacy as well as sexual activity.”

“Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone. But sometimes-always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate-there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; or, possibly, it may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other such there be. This bemoaning of one's self (as you do now) over the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness atyouth regained,-so much deeper and richer than that we lost,-are essential to the soul's development”

“She told me as I sat frightened like a mouse, just like you, 'A woman's body follows the moon. It is not still and hard like a man's. Her happiness and sadness take many forms; each day the brightness of her light and the mysterious depths of her shadows may change. A woman is close to the earth yet near to the heavens. She grows like the harvest; she becomes ripe like fruit. When, after many children, my son looks at you and asks where is the beauty of your youth, tell him these words. The body of your youth stays with your youth, and the body of the harvest, that is the body of your later years. Look at nature, how she dresses herself for every season. In the summer, she adorns herself as fields of rose and pink blooms, with fruits of peach, mango, and lemon, and as the season cools, she, too, dresses in darker hues of brown, maroon, and gold, and in the rains she is all gray mist and stormy blues. A woman must always be proud and look after herself.' Those are principles we follow forever, even us old ones.”

“The transformation of a gilded playboy into a multinational titan did not surprise me. Age does not affect the taste for trophies, and flagging physical vigor is often compensated for by a fresh psychological drive. [...] In his fifties, a man’s virility often goes into action to build up a capital of power as a shelter against glandular decline.”

“By the age of twenty, you know you're not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in- you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy and successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate... ...I mean, why do people live so long? What could be the difference between death at fifty-five and death at sixty-five or seventy-five or eighty-five? Those extra years... what benefit could they possibly have? Why do we go on living even though nothing new happens, nothing new is learned, and nothing new is transmitted? At fifty-five, your story's pretty much over.”

“Regarde la vie en face, car elle n’hésitera pas à te traverser.”

“It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

“My problem isn’t death but old age. I fret about my lack of balance, my buckling knee, my difficulty standing up and sitting down. Yesterday I fell asleep in an armchair. I never fall asleep in a chair. Indolence overcomes me every day. I sit daydreaming about what I might do next: putting on a sweater or eating a piece of pie or calling my daughter. Sometimes I break through my daydream to stand up. At Christmas or birthday, I no longer want objects, even books. I want things I can eat, cheddar or Stilton, my daughter’s chili, and replacements for worn-out khakis, T-shirts, socks, and underwear.”

“There is a tension between what is good for someone and what they want to do. This is because people, especially older people, like to do things as they've always done them. The problem is that when the brain develops ingrained habits, it doesn't need to think anymore. Things get done very quickly and efficiently on automatic pilot, often in a very advantageous way. This creates a tendency to stick to routines, and the only way of breaking these is to confront the brain with new information.”

“I don't know why weighing 140 pounds means I'm middle-aged, but it does. It is a magic number. A matronly number. More important than wishing young people would get their hair out of their eyes and more important than thinking Green Day sounds banal and that MTV is too sexist. If I could lose ten pounds, then maybe I could put off middle age for a while. But the thought of dieting, of thinking of food all the time, seems like too much to contemplate.”

“The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can’t live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin’ wide in the turns.”

“As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know that is happening we are forty, fifty, sixty... Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it.”

“You don’t understand this when you’re younger but at some point, you cease doing things, cease creating new memories,” he thought aloud. “You are stuck in a rocking chair. And all you have are your memories. Those beautiful droplets of color you’ve managed to steal from the rainbow. And you go back to them over and over and over, like a Catholic praying the rosary. You dig in deep, sifting through decades, years, seasons, weeks, hours, and seconds of your life, trying to figure out what it all meant. I wanted to come back to you. I wanted to see you in color, to grasp my own little rainbow.”

“It’s not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys, it’s homophobia. It’s not the color of their skin that makes life harder for people of color; it’s racism. It’s not having vaginas that makes life harder for women, it’s sexism. And it’s ageism, far more than the passage of time, that makes growing older harder for all of us.”

“I live here on the Prade Ranch alone-already years beyond the age my mother was when she returned to the ranch-to the particular elements of the earth: soil, water, carbon sky. You can rot or you can burn but either way, if you're lucky, a place will shape and cut and bend you, will strengthen you and weaken you. You trade your life for the privilege of this experience-the joy of a place, the joy of blood family; the joy of knowledge gotten by listening and observing. For most of us, we get stronger slowly, and then get weaker slowly, with our cycles sometimes in synchrony with the land's health, though other times independent of its larger cycles. We watch and listen and notice as the land, the place -life- begins to summon its due from us. It's so subtle...a trace of energy departing here, a trace of impulse missing there. You find yourself as you have always been, square in the middle of the metamorphosis, constantly living and dying: becoming weaker in your strength, finally. Perhaps you notice the soil, the rocks, or the river, taking back some of that which it has loaned to you; or perhaps you see the regeneration occurring in your daughter, if you have one, as she walks around, growing stonger. And you feel for the fir time a sweet absence...”

“Pre-forty, you can wash your face with Tide and use Vaseline for moisturizer, toss on a little mascara and lip gloss, and you're a friggin' cover girl. Those of us on the slippery slope that is the Other Side of Forty can testify-- those days are so over. You pore over labels promising everything short of actual rebirth-- you will buy most of them for an average of $450 per quarter once-- and none of them will work. You will still be getting older and poorer with every passing purchase.”

“Slowly I felt flooded with that agonizing and poignant confusion that surely comes to all aging men experiencing their first adolescent love. I had no great wish to go on living; what was the point of a flawed happiness. According to Bonnard, the hardest moment of all is when the artist longs to keep on but he’s conscience tells him that one brushstroke more will spoil the entire painting. And man has to know when to stop.”