Get Real!

Kentucky public radio reporter Rhonda J. Miller has found a way to live with advancing age—in her case, approaching 70.  In an online article in Next Avenue, a publication for older adults from Twin Cities Public Broadcasting, she riffs on what it is to be real.

She describes listening to a presentation at a gerontology conference in Austin, TX in which mental health professionals described embracing “the age of being Real.”

Presenter Connie Corley, a professor of gerontology who has worked in the field for four decades, cited guidance from inspirational speaker and author Wayne Dyer, who said, “Don’t die with your music still in you.”

Corley also said that getting older means caring less about what people think and finding and following their passions.

This resonated with me as I have more solitary time to spend and enjoy during self-imposed quarantine during the pandemic.

It’s very hot right now in Arizona, limiting the opportunity to exercise outdoors.  I have an indoor workout regimen with resistance bands and weights, but to “change it up,”

I do a 20-minute “workout” dancing to disco classics.  I no longer can boogie for hours, but I find joy and release in moving to the music and recalling my disco days in New York.

I don’t move and groove like I used to, but who’s looking and who cares?

Here’s how Miller defines “being Real.”

“That means being thankful my sharp edges have been worn down by life.  It means being grateful that even though my heart has been broken by the losses of important relationships and the death of loved ones, it still pumps strongly, fueled by compassion.

“I’m bending and stretching to loosen up those stiffer joints. I greet my honestly earned wrinkles with a sense of gentleness about my overall ’shabbiness’ brought on by the winds and rains of life.

“I remind myself that I, and the millions of others who have reached our years as ‘older adults’ cannot be ugly, except to those who don’t understand what it means to be ‘Real.’”