The Up Side of Old Age

This article is from an article in The New York Times.

I know it’s not ‘politically correct’ to describe people as ‘old,’ but I use the term intentionally and I mean no disrespect. In fact, quite the contrary.


When I say, ‘old,’ here, I mean whatever  YOU  consider ‘old.’ If you ask an 8-year-old, “How old is old?” They might say 12. The pre-teen will likely answer, ‘16.’ High school juniors will say that 21 is old and college students cannot imagine being as old as 30. Folks who have weathered 3 or 4 decades start looking at 50-60 as old, but most new retirees will consider 70 or 80 to be old. And, of course, if you ask an octagenarian how old ‘old’ is, they’re likely to give you a wise, number-less answer like, “You’re as old as you feel,” or “My daughter is old, that’s what old is, she never has anything good to say and she’s wasted all her opportunities.”

Dr. Marc E. Agronin explores how often we make the wrong assumptions about old age. He tells the story of an elderly woman in a nursing home. He expected her to be grieving for her late husband, but instead found she had thrown herself into new activities and relationships.


All of us lapse into such mistaken impressions of old age from time to time. It stems in part from an age-centered perspective, in which we view our own age as the most normal of times, the way all life should be.

At 18, the 50-year-olds may seem ancient, but at 50 we are apt to say the same about the 80-year-olds.

"So what’s it really like to be old?” he  often ask his  patients, who are mostly in their late 80s and 90s, and the responses are unexpected.

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