When my husband’s Aunt Myrtle was 90 we were encouraging her to spend some of her hard, earned money on things she had always wanted. She said, “Oh, no! I couldn’t do that. I’m saving that for my old age.” We didn’t have the heart to tell her we thought 90 was pretty old.
Last year the Pew Research Center conducted a survey on aging. Most respondents under 30 thought you were old by the time you reached 60. Those middle-aged thought it was 70. Those 65 thought it was 75. According to Aunt Myrtle old age was always ten years older than what we really are.
Because people are living longer, determining old age isn’t as easy as counting how many birthdays you’ve had. It depends on other factors such as: no longer being able to safely drive a car, failing health, loss of sex drive, or not being able to live independently?
However, survey responders confirmed that you are never too old to feel young. 98 year-old Ida Ruth Hayes Greene would agree. Raised on a Georgia farm, she never got to finish high school. When her mother died she had to drop out and help raise her ten younger siblings. Recently she fulfilled her life long dream by passing the test to receive her high school diploma.
Here are some others who made major accomplishments in their golden years:
- Colonel Sanders started KFC at age 65.
- Benjamin Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence at 70.
- Michelangelo was 71 when he painted the Sistine Chapel.
- Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel at 71.
- Casey Stengel started managing the New York Metz at 71.
- Ronald Reagan was reelected president of the United States at 73.
- George Burns won his first Oscar at age 80 for the Sunshine Boys.
- Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was 80.
- Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize in “Philosophy or Medicine” for discovering genetic transposition at 82.
- Winston Churchill wrote A History of the English Speaking Peoples at 82.
- Coco Channel was the head of a fashion design firm at 85.
- Albert Schweitzer was still performing surgeries at his hospital in Africa at 89.
- Pablo Picasso was still producing engravings and drawings at 90.
- Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, was still serving in Congress in his 90s.
- Sadie and Bessie Delany were in their 100s when they wrote Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.
In the Delany Sisters’ follow up book, The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom, they advise people to stay active – mentally and physically. It seems to be a key to feeling younger longer.
Most of us will probably not swim the English Channel, set marathon records, or find a cure for cancer in our senior years (or even our younger years). But there is something wonderful in aging gracefully, finding ways to serve others, and living a full, rich life. As Abraham Lincoln said, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
My advice to the young is not to diminish the value of the aged for they have much to contribute. Get to know and respect them (Leviticus 19:32). Gray hair is a glorious crown (Proverbs 16:31).
The plea of the elderly is found in Psalm 71:9. “Do not cast me away when I’m old…”
And may we all live long enough to be old (Deuteronomy 5:33)!
