Overcoming the Fear of Aging - zen habits zen habits
Last year, I turned 50 years old … and I found myself thinking about aging more than I ever had before. To be clear, 50 years old is still pretty young, but there’s something about the number that had me realizing that my 60s and 70s aren’t very far away, and it was a bit confronting to me.
After all, I’d spent most of my life thinking that growing old was something to fear. It’s a cultural assumption that goes deep into our society — beliefs that being old means you are feeble, weak, helpless, irrelevant. I know that that isn’t really true — but we’re constantly given cultural messages that it is true.
So when I turned 50, I spent some time sitting with this. What does it mean to me to grow older? What are my fears? What are my prejudices? How do I want my older years to be?
As an exercise, I highly recommend that you start to notice your own biases about aging and being old, and notice how often people around you (and in the media you consume) talk about aging as if it’s a bad thing. The word “old” is used as an insult. If you say you’re old, other people will tell you, “Oh, you’re not old yet” as if you were insulting yourself. Or, “It’s OK, you don’t look old.” Or, “You look young for your age!” These are meant to be reassuring, because being old is assumed to be bad.
