OLD AINT WHAT IT USED TO BE

We are the witness of disintegration of joint family where grandchildren and grandparents used to live under the same roof and used to share their happiness and support each other on their bad days.

Due to change in social structure and economic reasons family members started relocating themselves living behind the old people (grandparents/parents) to manage their affairs by themselves. This situation is prevalent in all the societies. 

New generation is facing extreme pressure from their profession and getting relocated across India and abroad. In spite of their wish they are not able to support their parents, even not able to visit them when they need them most.

Why are people afraid of getting older?

You feel wiser. You feel more mature. You feel like you know yourself better. You would trade that for softer skin? 

Why would I worry about getting older—what’s to moan about?

When you look around your life at everything you’ve created and experienced and collected, I bet you can count more gratitude than complaints. 

That’s another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face. Go ahead; show off those laugh lines that helped you fall in love, the wrinkles that created you rich, and everything in between.

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate.

Thank you … If those who are old today are stepping onto untrodden ground, we boomers are about to create a stampede.

And chances are we'll be extremely skilled at making old age into an interesting and fruitful time of life. We know how to explore and plumb possibility. We have already been enjoying far fewer societal constraints in our middle years than has ever previously been the norm. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D., a psychologist and aging expert from Silver Springs, Maryland, says across the board we have fewer age-based limitations to hinder us.

"It's not simply that we tend to keep our health longer; it's that we also aren't subject to generational restrictions on behaviour, career choices, or clothing." If you decide to go to medical school -or rollerblading--tomorrow, you might just do so.

Want to add word or two? 

In 1900, the average 30 year old in the U.S. could expect to live another 35 years...in other words, to die by age 65. Today, the average 30-year-old can expect another 50 years of life; to live until age 80. And by the time those 30 year 0lds actually are 80, who knows what their life expectancy will be?

Our ideas about aging, and what it means to be over 50 - or 60, or 90 - seem to be stuck somewhere back in the middle of the 20th century. We still consider 65 (or 55, in some sectors) as standard retirement age, and we expect everyone to start slowing down and moving aside for the next generation as their age ticks past the half-century mark.

Your comment ….? 

I've been realizing that these standard societal notions of what it means to be old - especially for women - just aren't applying to me. And most important, that I can craft my later years to be what I want them to be, rather than what anybody else tells me they must be.

It felt like a light-hearted manifesto (if there can be such a thing), a quick poke in our collective assumptions about aging. It really resonated for me, and made me think about how we can live the life we want, rather than the one that’s prescribed for us.

So let's get practical. If you find yourself on the AARP side of 50, and you don't want to follow the path laid down for you by society’s expectations, here are seven things you can do to age like a fine wine or a great violin, vs. a can of diet coke or a cheap car:

Think about yourself.

An extremely bright and successful woman in her early 50s, who is realizing that she never really focused on what kind of life she wanted to create for herself. As a younger person in the work world trying to juggle a marriage, two kids, a career, an extended family, and community commitments, you spent decades just trying to do what was in front of you as well as you could.

As we get older, many of us have the luxury of choice for the first time. When you don't have so many things and people clamoring for your attention on a daily basis, you can think about what you'd like the rest of your life to look like.

Want to keep working?

Figure out how to make that happen on your terms.

Want to stop working?

Figure out how to make that happen on your terms.

Want to create some new version of work/not work?

Figure out how to... you get the idea. Don't assume you have to do or can't do anything. Get clear about what you love and what you're good at, and make a life that you truly want to live.

The oldest person to climb Mt Everest is Yuichiro Miura of Japan, who reached the summit of Mt Everest in 2013 at age 80. And the oldest person to have climbed all seven mountains in seven continents is Takao Arayama of Tanzania who climbed the last of those mountains at age 74 in 2010.

Over time, as life expectancy increases and people become healthier, older people can do things which were previously the domain of those younger. Indeed, no one would be surprised if, within the next decade, both the above records were broken.

Well, perhaps not exactly no one.

People who analyze population aging using conventional measures assume that none of the attributes that are important for understanding aging change over time or differ in localities. But a wide variety of attributes can be used to study aging. An important one for 65-year-olds, for example, is their projected remaining life expectancy. Another one is how well those 65-year-olds can remember things.

I believe that it is time for aging measurements to account for the new reality of today’s old age, including how well the elderly actually function.

For example, in 1950, 65-year-old Swedish men had a life expectancy of 13.5 more years. In 2011, their life expectancy was 18.4 years more, almost 5 years longer.

In contrast in 2010, 65-year-old Russian men  had a life expectancy of 11.9 more years, which is less than that of Swedish men in 1900.

By ignoring changes in the attributes of people and looking only at chronological age, the conventional approach provides a misleading picture of the future.

Prospective age is a measurement based on the average number of years that people have left to live. We categorize people as being “old” not at age 65, but when people at their age have an average of 15 more years to live.

First, rapid increases in life expectancy may affect the sustainability of pension systems. But more and more countries are adopting pension systems that automatically adjust for changes in life expectancy. For this growing list of countries, the challenge of sustaining pension systems has already been successfully addressed. The United States, unfortunately, is not one of those countries, but it could be in the future.

The second fear centers on health-care costs. But health-care costs are highest in the last few years of life and these years occur later as life expectancy increases.

The third fear is that there will be so many seriously disabled people in the future that it will be difficult to care for all of them. The evidence, however, tends not to support this concern because the rates of severe disability at each stage of older age tend to decrease with increasing life expectancy.

The last fear is that when life expectancy increases there will be more people not working. However, simultaneous with the increases in the life expectancy and health of Americans, the labor force participation rates of 65- to 69-year-olds has jumped (according to figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics) from 21.8% in 1990 to 30.8% in 2010 ‘

Think about a future in which more than half of the population would be older than the age at which most people retire today.

Pension systems, tax systems, educational systems, and labor markets will all have to adjust.