We are definitely in an age where everything is being RE/defined. Salon business, workspace, money, life, death, age and just about anything else you can think of.
Take (older) age for example.
At the age of just 48, my own dad retired (at 84 he’s still going strong). In those days dads looked old and acted older. After retiring my dad seemed dedicated and resigned to a life of relentless pursuit of cutting grass, trimming hedges and buying, building, removing and buying again a new shed. My dad has owned more sheds than I care to count. Most dads I knew did the same sort of things.
But they quickly looked old, they acted old, their minds had become old before they were actually old.
Looking back, I think they played the role of getting older. That role was heavily marketed as the perfect way to live life. Yet it created boredom and boasted the claim that most men would die within a year or two of retiring (shocking but true).
Sylvester Stallone is 76-years-of-age this week. He is a guy that has re/invented what old age is. He has a body I would certainly die for and a lifestyle still making action movies that most younger actors daren’t take just in case they hurt their knee. And Tom Cruise just gets younger and better with his age. He’s the same age as myself.
Age RE/invention and RE/definition is an incredible thing but can only take place if you step outside the normal thought that age is a lifestyle that has to be lived a certain way.
This starts in the mind… YOUR mind.
My 77-year-old mother says to me don’t you think you are a little old for going to the gym? At 56-years-of-age and when she was that age most men just sat around and waited for death. I think I grew up in a time when expectations of what was to be the new normal were very strong.
Am I trying to RE/invent my old age? I think the closer truth is I don’t really think about old age as a pattern or way of life I just think about life. I have a baby son, I have a younger wife and I have a passion for living that I can’t see stopping or slowing down at any time soon. I create daily, I do get bored by I try to create all of the time. That doesn’t mean I deny age I simply RE/define my own approach to it.
We are told, you have to live like this or do things like that. It was always told to us and shown to us that this was the way. These days it isn’t that we are turning back age or death but it is the fact we are RE/finding, RE/inventing age and our approach to life – not death. Death is the outcome no one can run from – it will come – but life is the reality we have to live whilst here.
Old age is being RE/invented. Aging is being RE/invented. But the truth is it starts in your mind. The way you think, feel and look at life is the starting point for life itself.
Just wait until bio-engineering really kicks in and becomes more mainstream. The future for old age is looking very different.
If you want to reinvent your life you first have to look at the way you are approaching life – not age. Age is inevitable and anyone trying to pretend otherwise is only fooling themselves.
The mind must be kept active, busy and creating Once it stops creating boredom becomes normal. Once we are bored the brain slowly beings to die. Once the brain starts to die so do something called the telemeres, once they start to shorten death or ill health will approach faster than we were probably planning.
I do my own best to eat well. we have a rule in our home and it is this. If it is in the sealed pack we just don’t buy or eat it. Anything that looks like it was put together in a factory we don’t eat. We only at what can grow from the ground or trees and organic meats.
And there are vitamins. I take all kinds of things for prevention and good health rather than repair. I don’t feel the need to be repaired (yet) but I do take all kinds of organic supplements when I can.
And fitness. I go to my gym four times a week. I pay a trainer to work out and plan my routines. I also go to yoga for flexibility.
And finally, I stay happy. it feels like happiness is a conversation that is no longer as public as it used to be. we can read about depression, anxiety and mental illness daily. The viral effect of that is obvious. What about if we read about happiness daily? I try and stay as happy and accepting as I can be.
How about you? Have you settled and accepted what life is or are you also looking at RE/defining your life – your salon life?
More to come on this subject soon.
Peace.
Alan Forrest Smith