I normally discard content suggested by unknown organizations, but issues of aging have growing importance to baby-boomers like me. When Andrea Needham of Elders Day offered an article, I reviewed her website and found useful advice and links to worthwhile content. Ms. Needham’s item will be published in coming days.

One link was to Finding Meaning and Happiness in Old Age at The New York Times. It explores the best ways to develop a healthy perspective on old age. Excerpts follow:

…Too many in our youth-focused culture currently regard the elderly with fear or disdain and consider them costly consumers of resources with little to offer in return. Given the explosive pace of technology that often befuddles the elderly, they command little or no respect for the repository of wisdom that was once cherished by the young (and still is in some traditional societies).

People 85 and above… — They’ve given up distractions that make us do stupid things and instead focus on what’s important to them. To a person, they don’t worry about things that might happen. They worry when it happens, and even then they don’t worry. They just deal with it…

[“Positive aging”] is “a state of mind that is positive, optimistic, courageous, and able to adapt and cope in flexible ways with life’s changes.” …creativity is not limited to young people. At any age, it can open people up to new possibilities and add richness to life…

Older people, knowing they face a limited time in front of them, focus their energies on things that give them pleasure in the moment, not on a future that may never be.

Another link was to 4 Keys to Increase Your Happiness As You Get Older at Psychology Today:

There is no age at which we must abandon our dreams and surrender our future.

By age 50, you’ve likely accumulated the wisdom needed to place yourself on more solid ground with a clearer sense of where your life is going. And then, in our youth-obsessed society, you’re suddenly labeled “old.” Everything changes.

Society often sends the message that old age is just a waiting room for the end—either elderly people are weak, sick, and irrelevant or that old age is all about meaningless recreation.

…those who see their future as one without goals, effort, or growth are much less happy than those who see their coming years just as abounding with possibilities as their previous ones.

If you see old age as a time when you stop doing and stay still, you won’t get to experience all the joys of being human: discovering, developing, expanding. There is no age at which we must abandon our dreams and surrender our possibilities.

…As you grow older, you can contribute to life in a new way, one that is true to who you are today. That is the gift of the present moment. It is fresh and alive with opportunities that aren’t bound to the past.