Prime Time - Jane Fonda [9]
Droopy skin isn’t the only manifestation of my age. I choose shoes for comfort now, not style. As Ted Turner’s father once said, “What’s the good of money if your feet hurt!” My eyesight has diminished. When I began writing this book, I was using font size 14; now I use size 18 and still need glasses. And I rail at restaurants with menus whose print is so small and faint that I need a flashlight! Whatever it is I’m doing, I know now that I have to do it a little slower. I don’t leap gracefully out of cars; I don’t rush across streets; I use railings and am careful to watch where I step; I pay more attention to posture, partly for looks, but mostly so my back won’t hurt. None of these things is a big deal. I know others are less fortunate, including those who face major health problems. I’m not happy about any of my physical problems, but I do not want them to define me. Instead, like many people I have talked to who are in Act III and whose stories are in this book, I just get on with my life, trying to live it, make it useful, and enjoy it as fully as I can. The Positivity and Generativity that I write about in Parts Two and Four are very much at the center of my life.
More on the Longevity Revolution
Opting for mounting the staircase of life rather than staying on the descending arch becomes especially important given that, as already mentioned, longevity has become a new cultural phenomenon. Certainly, there have always been very old people—my mother’s father and mother lived into their nineties—but they bore little resemblance to grandparents of today. My grandparents did not seem to enjoy the potential vibrancy we can now expect. They did not come of age with an awareness of the importance of aerobic and weight-bearing exercises for keeping our metabolisms high, our weight in check, and our muscles and bones strong. No one knew, really, about the cost of smoking cigarettes, or about the healing effects of good cognitive therapy, twelve-step programs, or meditation. They didn’t have the benefits of joint replacements or organ transplants, or medicines that can eliminate or at least relieve many of the major age-related illnesses or conditions (including Viagra, Cialis, and testosterone therapy).
My maternal grandmother, Sophie Seymour, holding Vanessa as a baby, 1968.
With Malcolm, my grandson, when he was about one year old.
RICHARD PHIBBS/ART DEPT
Today, almost 20 percent of the U.S. population is sixty-five or older—25 million men and 31 million women—and every year people live two-tenths of a year longer!
Think about it: At the time of our founding fathers, in the eighteenth century, the average life expectancy was only thirty-five. Since then, science, modern medicine, improved nutrition and lifestyle, sanitation, and lower maternal mortality rates have extended our life expectancy by forty-five years, from thirty-five to eighty! As I have said, this represents an entire second adult lifetime. The jump of thirty-four years in just the last century is truly stunning given that during the previous forty-five hundred years, from the middle of the Bronze Age to the twentieth century, human life expectancy increased by only twenty-seven years. This may be one of the most dramatic changes in contemporary times, and we have barely begun to come to terms with what it means for us individually, for the future of our society, and for the planet. From a policy and cultural point