![\"Clowns](\"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Clowns.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI wonder what Messrs. Townshend and Daltrey think of their immortal line \u201cHope I die before I get old\u201d 53 (or so) years after they wrote it?<\/p>\n
My guess is that they\u2019ve redefined \u201cold\u201d\u2014that\u2019s what most of us do.<\/p>\n
\u201cOld Age Pension? What a ridiculous name for it!\u201d you might say as you receive your first payout from the government.<\/p>\n
But remember how old your grandparents seemed when they were in their sixties? (Assuming they made it that far.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI might be the same age as they were, but I\u2019m not as old as they were!\u201d you retort.<\/p>\n
And you might be right.<\/p>\n
Age isn\u2019t just how far back in the past your birth certificate was filled in. It\u2019s also physical and mental health, and above all, attitude.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The American biologist James D. Watson said, \u201cThe only way to stay young is to avoid old people\u201d.<\/p>\n
This is the James D. Watson who co-invented DNA in 1953, so he must be smart.<\/p>\n
What does this tell us? Well, corollary-wise, it tells us that bunching old people together in a home is only going to make them older, so why do we do it? Because we want to die quicker? So we don\u2019t infect the young with oldness?<\/p>\n
Newsflash\u2014they were infected at birth, but the pathogen stays dormant for a while.<\/p>\n
And never, ever forget that oldness sure as heck beats the alternative. So, unless you want to take your dirt nap sooner rather than later, heed James Watson\u2019s advice and stay away from seniors communities. Hang out with your kids and their friends. Better still, hang out with your grandkids and their friends. Or best of all\u2014hang out in a human egg storage facility.<\/p>\n
But assuming such facilities don\u2019t encourage sexagenarian, septuagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian and older volunteers, we must look for other ways to preserve our youth.<\/p>\n
One popular option is yoga. Thing is, there\u2019s so many flavours. Power yoga, hot yoga, acro yoga, nude yoga (really!), hatha yoga, kundalini yoga\u2026 and many more. You need help choosing a variety that would suit you (or in the case of nude yoga, un-suit you.) Fortunately, The Huffington Post reproduced a \u201cflowchart<\/a>\u201d from yogatrail.com to help you.<\/p>\n What else is there? There\u2019s surgical\/medical intervention of course. We have access to hair implants, nip-tuck procedures, laser surgeries for our eyes, invisible hearing aids, dental implants, replacement hips and knees; Viagra, Botox, liposuction\u2026 And all these things help us maintain our delusion that we\u2019re not old farts.<\/p>\n Do you remember Elton John when he was nearly bald? Now he\u2019s got a head of hair that the sasquatch would be proud of.<\/p>\n But no matter how many procedures we inflict on ourselves, we can\u2019t erase the past from our memories (unless it\u2019s the memory of what we had for supper last night). So, we compare the world today with the one we grew up in. That\u2019s when reality kicks in and bites us.<\/p>\n And whereas our world used to be full of old people, it now seems to be full of youngsters. Do you remember when doctors, policemen, school principals all seemed old? No amount of silicon or titanium can change the fact that it\u2019s getting to the stage where Supreme Court Judges and members of the House of Lords or Senate don\u2019t look ancient anymore.<\/p>\n A line from Fred Wedlock\u2019s \u201cThe Oldest Swinger in Town\u201d goes, \u201cA man is just as old as the woman he feels\u201d. In #metoo times, I guess that song might not get many plays on the radio these days, but if you look up the lyrics to the whole song, you\u2019ll find some disturbingly close-to-home truths.<\/p>\n The yoga flowchart I mentioned has a path that takes you to a suggestion to take up \u201csenior yoga\u201d. The path contains just two questions.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you feel like moving your body?\u201d ==> No\u2026 ==> \u201cAre you old? ==> Yes\u2026 ==> Senior Yoga.<\/p>\n That’s what happens when you admit to being old. No hot yoga. And definitely no nude yoga (there\u2019s eight questions to get through before you get that particular recommendation!)<\/p>\n My advice;\u00a0 watch<\/a> \u201cMy Generation\u201d performed by a group of people with a combined age of over 3,000\u2014the lead singer was apparently 90 years old. And it was recorded at Abbey Road.<\/p>\n Enjoy\u2026 and feel young again!<\/p>\n What thoughts do you have about getting old? Or staying young? PLEASE share!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wonder what Messrs. Townshend and Daltrey think of their immortal line \u201cHope I die before I get old\u201d 53 (or so) years after they wrote it? My guess is that they\u2019ve redefined \u201cold\u201d\u2014that\u2019s what most of us do. \u201cOld Age Pension? What a ridiculous name for it!\u201d you might say as you receive your first payout from the government…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490],"tags":[581,580,582],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-commentaries","tag-ageing","tag-aging","tag-nude-yoga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Getting Real<\/h1>\n