Baby boomers redefine aging

By 2020, the population of Americans age 55 to 64 will have grown an unprecedented 73 percent since 2000. But as the population ages, the possibilities and potential for their value is also growing with the passage of time.

People are proving that a trip around the sun doesn’t limit their ability to continue to add value to their community and families. Instead, they’re breaking physical barriers and defying time’s ticking.

Ken Dychtwald, president and CEO of the consulting firm AgeWave, moderated the Aging in America Conference last April. In a recent HuffingtonPost.com article, Dychtwald said: “Today a new model of life is emerging. People want to distribute the longevity bonus. They are going back to school at 40 and coming back from illness to run a marathon at 80. They are beginning as late bloomers and hitting their stride in later years.” And his best line: “We are thinking of people as beginners again and again.”

In the same Huffington Post article an author and columnist characterized the years between a person’s mid-50s and early 70s as “The Grand Tweens.” Examples abound. For instance, former US President George H. W. Bush went skydiving to celebrate not just his 75th birthday, but his 80th and 85th, too!

More people past retirement age are also opting to continue to work. A tough economy has contributed to this trend, but as a recent cover story in The Christian Science Monitor pointed out: “Many seniors, for their part, are engaged in a righteous rebellion against artificial limits—against the notion that hitting 65 means one’s contributions to society are largely in the rearview mirror” (“The Silver-Collar Economy,” September 2, 2012). The same article features a centenarian who still goes to work every day. “I’d rather be here than almost anywhere,” she says.

The larger implication in all of this is that the common expectation of declining health in later years is being defied by the current pursuits of the baby boomers. Many attribute this expectation to a growing search for and practice of spirituality by the boomer generation. (NBCNews.com: “As they age, baby-boomers seek spirituality.”) You could say they are living proof of this wisdom from the Bible: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-make you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed” (Romans 12:2, J.B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition).

That is certainly what Honor Hill from Dallas, Texas, is doing. She’s a practitioner of Christian Science and for many years gave public lectures on a spiritual view of aging. She’s still working, alongside her relatively new pursuit of training and participating in marathons. We recently chatted over the phone about her thoughts on the topic.

“In my lectures I often said, ‘We know that old is the opposite of young. But old is also the opposite of new.’ I would then challenge the audience to think about what they did to grow new every day. Because to experience something new every day is to embrace life.”

“Movement needn’t be affected by age.” —Honor Hill

Honor says our limitations are truly mental in nature and that we’ve come a long way since her grandmother’s time, when it would never have been thought possible to run a marathon at her age. Honor first entered a 5K walking race. Then, after progressing to a couple of half marathons, she decided to walk a half marathon in her hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne in England last September. She walked the 13.1 miles and made it in 2 hours 51 minutes. (Her best time now is 2 hours 43 minutes.)

She’s had to work her way up to the running. “I love running … especially when I’m not actually doing it!” Honor candidly admits she’s better at walking than at running. In fact she’s a faster walker than all of her friends, even the younger ones. (I told her I’m a pretty fast walker, and she challenged me to beat her time!)

Training in the hot Dallas sun isn’t easy with summer temperatures often pushing over 100. As Honor sought inspiration about the training and performing, she thought about the connection between consciousness and health. She says, “When people talk about mind-body, there’s the assumption that the body communicates back to the mind—the idea of ‘listening to your body’ to know how it’s feeling, etc. But I don’t believe the body has any communicative skills. Christian Science shows that it’s a one-way street—just Mind, God, doing the communicating, never the other way around.”

Honor emphasizes exercising wisdom and humility with activities one pursues. She likes this idea from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the textbook on Christian Science which she studies daily in tandem with the Bible: “Mind’s infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 514 ).

Honor explains: “Disport means joy in the activity. I think we need to avoid hubris—pridefully doing things we’re not really ready to do. I need to be humble, submit to wisdom, and at the same time not submit to limitation.”

She lives with this other statement from Science and Health: “Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action” (p. 283 ). That’s gotten her through some “walls” in races because, as she says, “Mind, God, doesn’t age—its movement, life, and action is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That means my movement needn’t be affected by age.”

She is clear about her motive for pursuing her sport. “I don’t run to defy common thoughts about aging, I’m doing it because I love to do it. I’ve made new friends and found new ways of looking at the world. It’s about newness.” And to that, she adds, “I even started to learn to play bagpipes a few years ago!”

Honor said she’s never experienced injury or illness while pursuing her sport, which she attributes to her daily prayer practice. “I focus on the joy of it … it’s just a lot of fun.”