Growing older is inevitable. Becoming old is a different conversation
My 80 year old friend Morgan told me 30 years ago that she would be twenty-five forever. And indeed, she still walks around with all the energy and bounce of a women decades younger than her chronological age. It’s safe to say she is very fit “for her age.” I wonder if maybe she is on to something.
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Women Were Sold a Very Strange Story About Aging Somewhere along the way, women were handed a very peculiar script.
It went something like this:
Turn 25. Begin worrying.
Turn 30. Start apologizing for your age.
Turn 40. Cut your hair.
Turn 50. Dress “appropriately.”
Turn 60. Fade quietly into the background.
The strange thing is that nobody seems to have informed certain women who seem to remain ageless.
Today, more than ever, women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond are launching businesses, traveling the world, falling in love, lifting weights, learning new languages, building social media audiences, and generally refusing to behave the way previous generations expected them to.
Maybe that’s because age is more complicated than the calendar suggests.
The Great Aging Myth
For decades, women were taught that youth was something that happened to them.
You were young.
Then one day, you weren’t.
The end.
But science increasingly suggests that aging is influenced by far more than the number of candles on a birthday cake.
Stress ages us.
Isolation ages us.
Poor nutrition ages us.
Lack of movement ages us.
Chronic negativity ages us.
A sedentary lifestyle ages us.
Meanwhile, curiosity, purpose, friendships, exercise, learning, optimism, and meaningful goals appear to help people remain healthier and more energetic for longer.
The body and the mind are constantly communicating.
A woman who believes life is over at 50 may unconsciously begin acting older.
A woman who believes her best years are still ahead may make very different choices.
Who Decided Women Had to Cut Their Hair?
One of the strangest traditions in Western culture is the idea that women should gradually remove signs of vitality as they age.
Long hair?
Too young.
Fashionable clothes?
Trying too hard to be young. Or worse, trying to compete with the young.
Bright lipstick?
Inappropriate.
Meanwhile, men are often praised for remaining youthful, adventurous, and stylish.
Women receive a different message: make everyone comfortable even if you have to lose yourself.
But why?
A woman with long hair is not pretending to be 25.
She’s simply refusing to disappear to make everyone else feel comfortable and seen.
The same goes for fashion.
You don’t need a micro-mini skirt to feel youthful.
Youthfulness is not about dressing like a teenager – whatever that even means these days.
It’s about expressing yourself.
A beautifully tailored blazer, great jeans, white sneakers, a linen shirt, a leather tote, or a flowing summer dress can look youthful at virtually any age because confidence itself reads as youthful.
The Young Mind Advantage
Have you ever met someone who was 35 and already old?
And someone else who was 75 and somehow still young?
Most people have.
That’s because youth is partly a state of engagement.
Young people tend to be interested in things.
They make plans.
They imagine futures.
They start projects.
They flirt with possibility.
The moment we stop doing those things, aging often accelerates. Rapidly.
The goal is not to be chronologically 25 forever. This obviously is not possible.
The goal is to keep the qualities that made 25 exciting:
curiosity
hope
energy
humor
optimism
and the belief that tomorrow could be better than today, even at 95 years of age.
The New Definition of Youth
Keep dreaming.
Because the women who seem youngest are rarely the ones chasing youth.
They’re the ones who never stopped living.
And that may be the most youthful thing of all.
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