Coming to Terms with Age
By Jeanne Strining
One step, another step, repeat, repeat. Back-and-forth across the warm water pool at the Schottland Y.
I was water walking, something I had secretly disparaged as being for “old ladies.”
Though being active has always been important to me, my commitment to it has waxed and waned over the years.
Growing up I spent a lot of time playing outdoors. I rode my bike, I hiked, I swam, I skied. As an adult with a family and full-time job, I often used the excuse, “I don’t have time,” or “I’m too tired,” to be less rigorous in my exercise.
At least my job as a classroom teacher and then as a building administrator kept me on my feet and moving. Then, as a central office administrator, I found most of my day and many evenings that I was sitting in meetings or at a computer.
I needed to up my game.
I started weekly Pilates lessons. I joined a gym and did aerobic workouts on the treadmill and elliptical. I eventually worked with a trainer to add weights to my workouts. After retirement, I really got serious about my exercising. Body pump classes with free weights and barbells became part of my routine every second or third day. The music energized me, but, bit by bit, the large number of repetitions with heavy weights began to take a toll on my joints. I modified my weights and movements and spaced the classes further apart. Eventually I was doing the class with so many modifications that I knew it was time to try something else.
A friend suggested that I start swimming laps, an exercise I had sworn that I would never do. I hated swimming laps. I found laps too tiring and too boring. Nonetheless, in an effort to improve my workout routine, I gave it a try. Swimming even 10 lengths of the pool was a challenge, but gradually I started to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. I could swim a little further each week and I loved the reward of a good soak in the whirlpool afterwards!
Eventually I got myself up to swimming a kilometer (44 lengths) two or three times a week. I continued my Pilates and added a strength training class. I started spin classes; cycling is a great aerobic exercise and easy on my joints. I wasn’t going to let getting older derail me! But I hadn’t counted on an accident.
Out for a walk with friends one winter day, I slipped on the ice. Down I went on my left shoulder, breaking my humerus. I was loaded into an ambulance and whisked off to the ER. Then the long, painful journey to recovery began. Frustration and discouragement would eat away at me. Was I too old for such an active life or was my active life prematurely aging me?
Becca Levy, Ph.D., and her recent book, “Breaking the Age Code, How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live,” came to my rescue. Levy is a professor of epidemiology and of psychology at Yale. The book details her many research studies that demonstrate how negative age beliefs dominate our culture and play a significant role in the development of many health problems. She also shares data and real-life examples that demonstrate how positive age beliefs can result in the extension of one’s life expectancy by 7.5 years.
Take a moment right now to think about your attitude toward aging. Try a simple activity that Levy gives her students: Quickly list five words or phrases that come to mind when you think of an older person.
(Pause and try it.)
How positive or negative is your list? Like many countries, the United States has a very ageist culture, so if your list is on the negative side, it’s probably because you have been bombarded with negative stereotypes.
Another interesting fact: the term “senior moment” was popularized by a Rochester Democrat and Chronicle columnist in 1997 in reference to someone who forgot his tennis score. To quote from Levy’s book, “Nearly 150 years ago, William James, the ‘father of American psychology,’ described the phenomenon as a gap in the mind ‘that is intensely active.’” It is not a neurological condition of age; memory lapses can and do occur at any age.
So, to combat ageism I choose to think of forgetfulness simply as a result of my having “too many balls in the air” or a lack of focus. I have a hearing loss not because I’m “old,” but because I have exceptionally narrow ear canals and had a bad ear infection resulting in tinnitus. I slipped on ice and broke my arm because in the pathway a puddle caused by the winter thaw the day before froze overnight. Even though my broken arm is fully healed and I can swim laps again, I continue my water walking because it is good exercise for my hips and legs, not because I am an old lady!
About Jeanne Strining
By Jane Eggleston
Jeanne Strining, a Rochester native who earned her bachelor’s degree at Tufts and her master’s at Wheelock College, returned to the Rochester area. In pursuing her vocation as a teacher, she was discouraged by the standard formulaic approach to teaching writing that led to dull results. But after taking a course in the writing workshop method, things changed. She found it exciting and it not only inspired her students but herself to write.
In 2020, Strining joined RIT’s Osher Lifelong Leaning Institute (Osher at RIT) and has found it a great opportunity to make new friends from varying backgrounds, to take interesting courses and to participate in the walking, travel and photography groups at Osher.
“Osher keeps me from getting into a ‘retirement rut.’ I have so many opportunities to learn new things and meet new people,” she said.
She has also found it a fantastic vehicle for pursuing her writing while teaching others.
Since the fall of 2021, she has led the course Writing Workshop in which she provides a short lesson in some aspect of writing, gives students time to write, then has them split up into small breakout groups to read their stories and receive helpful, positive feedback. She says that teaching older adults is the best because they have such interesting stories and perspectives, gleaned from a lifetime of living.