I headed to Minneapolis last weekend to pick up my nomad husband and decided to go a day early to visit an old friend from my early college days. We had been out of touch for quite some time while she was raising kids but we reconnected when we returned to the area to live seasonally. She was cleaning out old files and gave me an envelope of pictures of us during our adventures as young adults. What a blast from the past and it’s hard to believe I ever looked so good. I don’t know about you but the soul inside my aging body still feels like that young woman, although the “hope and promise” may have waned a bit. As the gap between our inner image and our aging outer image grows, it begs the question: Does this disconnect matter either to us as individuals or to others around us?
I think I have mentioned before that my motto on aging is to pick a number and stick with it; mine is 35 not because I remember anything stellar happening that year but because it seems like an age at which I was coming into my own. I then got to thinking about nursing homes that laminate and clip a young picture of residents to their clothing. I think this is an excellent idea that reminds employees there are real people inside the older bodies they are tending to and would be stunned to find out their residents probably still identify with these images. Maybe we should all select a picture of our younger selves that we like and remember as a good time in our lives and wear it every day. I think it might give us a boost to remember that person and know they are still alive and well inside us as the years roll around.
I then wondered if having others see that picture of us would change our life experiences moving forward. Would it change the way others see us? Would it lighten our interactions with others, change the opportunities presented to us or allow us to take risks we wouldn’t otherwise consider thus leading to a richer fuller life? Conversely, would it result in puzzling judgement from others leading to an even earlier trip to the nursing home? Either way, it could lead to fascinating discoveries about older people’s lives with an excellent example profiled in a book I recently read called “Count The Nights by Stars” written by Michelle Shocklee. Anyway, eat dessert or in this case birthday cake first because “life is short.”