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Aging Quotes

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Aging Quotes

“While there’s nothing wrong with looking our best, our best is predominantly an inside affair. With modern technology and money, people can make themselves look considerably ageless. However, it is not the right type of agelessness. If we age gracefully and with minimal intervention, then we and those around us are reminded of the movement of time and the preciousness of life. Otherwise, the botoxed face can get quite a shock when death does not heed its camouflaged face.”

“If we shift as we age toward appreciating everyday pleasures and relationships rather than toward achieving, having, and getting, and if we find this more fulfilling, then why do we take so long to do it? Why do we wait until we’re old? The common view was that these lessons are hard to learn. Living is a kind of skill. The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time.”

“Books are the mind's ballast, for so many of us--the cargo that makes us what we are, a freight that is ephemeral and indelible, half-forgotten but leaving an imprint. They are nutrition, too. My old age fear is not being able to read--the worst deprivation. Or no longer having my books around me: the familiar, eclectic, explanatory assemblage that hitches me to the wide world, that has freed me from the prison of myself, that has helped me to think, and to write.”

“Sandra stood by, quietly amused: she wore a sugar pink track suit with matching plastic hairslides in the shape of elephants. Edward could see quite clearly behind her shoulder, like the aura visible to spiritualists, the woman she would be in thirty years time. There is probably nothing to be done about people, he thought, nothing at all, nor ever has been: processed, from the cradle to the grave. Most neither know nor care, which makes it worse.”

“We knew it was only a moment. Our days of cool were numbered. Even when we were in it, right now was already gone. We didn’t know what it would be. Maybe a man. A baby. A death. What we knew was that soon, we’d pass thirty and get wrapped up in dull, adult things with no time or energy leftover to work at being cool. Just like that. Whoosh. Zoom. It’s over, and we’re here. From past to present.”

“For me- and for everybody else, probably- this is my first experience growing old, and the emotions I'm having, too, are all first-time feelings. If it were something I'd experienced before, then I'd be able to understand it more clearly, but this is the first time, so I can't. For now all I can do is put off making any detailed judgments and accept things as they are. Just like I accept the sky, the clouds, and the river. And there's also something kind of comical about it all, something you don't want to discard completely.”

“It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed 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.”

“I bought every kind of machine that's known- Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers- And all of them stood in the rain and sun, Getting rusted, warped and battered, For I had no sheds to store them in, And no use for most of them. And toward the last, when I thought it over, There by my window, growing clearer About myself, as my pulse slowed down, And looked at one of the mills I bought- Which I didn't have the slightest need of, As things turned out, and I never ran- A fine machine, once brightly varnished, And eager to do its work, Now with its paint washed off- I saw myself as a good machine That Life had never used.”

“No age of life is inglorious. Youth has its merits, but living to a ripe old age is the true statement of value. Aging is the road that we take to discern our character. Fame and fortune can elude us, but character is immortal. We must encounter a sufficient variety of experiences including both failures and accomplishments in order to gain nobility of character.”

“In recent years a smaller share of young adults has been employed than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking such trends in 1948. So it's not surprising that this generation of youthful protesters has a different focus for their grievances: the economy, stupid. But notice the targets they've chosen to demonize. It's all about class, not age. It's 1% versus 99%, not young versus old. Occupy Wall Street, not Occupy Leisure World.”

“For most of the population these days, the only thing that ever dances is a pair of thumbs texting. No wonder people are aging so fast on the Ship of Fools sailing Titanic-like through today into no tomorrow. As people’s souls shrink through lack of movement, their connective tissue hardens and their bones turn brittle. This isn’t metaphoric. This is the mind-body-spirit connection on full display, for anyone who cares to contemplate its cause and effects, in real time.”

“Western society doesn't make it easy to increase our longevity potential. Our youth-driven culture and our neglect of the aged promote a wholesale denial of the realities of aging. The marketplace is full of products and devices promising to make us look and feel younger. In addition, conventional Western medicine focuses on treatment and replacement therapy, prescribing expensive drugs, removing a failed organ and transplanting a new one, or replenishing a depleted hormone. Very little emphasis has been placed on preventing disease and maintaining a vigorous state of health day to day.”

“A device can be considered FDA-cleared if the manufacturer and the FDA agree that it is very similar to another device already on the market and is deemed safe to use. Becoming FDA-approved is a more rigorous process, used for devices for which there aren’t other, similar approved models on the market. What makes it even more confusing is that some devices may be FDA-cleared for one indication but used and marketed by physicians for a completely different indication. For example, some devices may be FDA-cleared for pain reduction, yet plastic surgeons use them to reduce fat.”

“Working on my book about refugees, I learned a great deal about trauma and recover, and with the help of the people I spoke with developed what I called "a healing package of treatments." These treatments could be medical interventions from Western doctors, traditional medicines from the refugee's culture of origin, or basic pleasures. For example, a common healing package for a refugee family included going to city parks, cooking foods from their homelands, and meeting people who spoke their language. All of us can create our own healing packages by thinking about that which makes us feel healthy, calm, and happy. We can write our own prescriptions for health that include nutrition and exercise, relationships, things we enjoy, and gratitude.”