Age is Abstract, So Don’t Paint Me By Numbers

IN WHICH I CONSIDER VITALITY TO INFINITY — AND BEYOND.

It’s true that age is just a number, and it is our energy that vibrates outwards that determines a life — or non-life, for that matter. As I’ve said, I believe I’m a wise, experienced twenty, and I vibrate that same vitality — the best match for me is either someone young, or one who vibrates at an equally youthful rhythm. Because, especially now that sixty is the new forty or even thirty, we need to jettison the tyrannical limitation of a number and all the prejudices that go along with it, in favor of a better, more valid measurement: vitality.

I’ve noticed vitality and youthfulness depend upon the ability to look forward — a hopeful, optimistic outlook. Think about it — young people are forever seeing life this way, always looking into a future. When such a future is considered already spent, and no longer open to possibilities, old age, then, sets in. The mere prospect of life is shut down, so is it any wonder our bodies and minds go along for the ride? The downward spiral — with its accompanying infirmity and indignity — is an inevitable, one-way journey — and a very unhot one.

Attitude is the foundation: Expect fabulous. Expect the best. Expect health, wealth, self-fulfillment and joy. The poet Walt Whitman said of his mother, that she behaved every day as if a wonderful surprise were about to arrive — and one usually did. That is the difference between an existence, and a life.

Never stop looking forward, moving forward and embracing the new. Keep expanding yourself into the best possible version of you; this is the M.O. at the very core of my being. My ever-bright outlook for the future and interest in all things new makes me — at any age — no different than a teenager with her entire life ahead of her.

So then, every day, carpe diem and carpe hot. Expand, explore, adventure, travel, take classes, build skills, create, give, laugh and love. Welcome the new and the unknown, for that’s where the excitement lives. When we’re on our deathbeds what we’ll regret most is not what we did, but what we didn’t do. Everybody has a dream, and that is what should make you jump out of bed to greet the sun everyday! That’s why whenever I meet someone new, of any age, I ask them who they want to be when they grow up.

Let’s turn off those screens and stop watching other people living. Time to get busy…on our own fabulous reality show.

Yours truly,