On Aging, Attitude and Promise, in the Kitchen and Elsewhere

  Paris July 2014

A few words about aging today.  Those words are “step away”, “think independently”, and “resolve”.  If you look and listen closely, as with so many big social issues in our country today, the perspectives around aging, the science and the sociology, are changing, and dramatically for the better……….

Could it possibly be that I feel younger and more invigorated than I have in, say, 50 years?  Looking in the mirror every morning may tell me otherwise – I have about 5% grey hairs now (a genetic gift) and well, the rest of me doesn’t look like it did, say 10 years ago. But, oh well, I don’t care much.  And so, how could that be possible?  I will tell you how.  But first, I must share some present-day serendipity – a great post, a great article which considers some very powerful ideas, and thank yous for a few other people.

http://gluttonforlife.com/2014/11/5/age_of_enlightenment

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html

Today, I want to thank Laura Chavez Silverman, Neitzsche, Sophia Loren, Dominique Ansel and the New York Times.

Laura Chavez Silverman is the author at gluttonforlife.com, a blog I very highly recommend.  She is one of the people I can identify with and who helped me today.  As the weeks of late Summer and early Autumn have turned into November, in spite of the fact that yesterday was indeed a glorious day here and I ran around in short jeans and flip flops, by 4:15 when I stepped out the door to go and vote, I could feel my entire demeanor sinking, fast.  Reading Laura’s post today has helped me to, as Ryan would say, “deal” as when I did, another of those all so valuable light bulbs went off.

In her post, she included this fabulous quote from the immortal Sophia Loren:

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age,”

There is a constant theme in my life these days and quotes such as this and people who I admire play more and more of a role in it.   I am learning how to write-over the ugly parts of my life with little bits of happiness.  Gradually, I can see and feel the sun.

Searching for role models and inspiring activities keep me busy most of the time.  For instance, I am coming up on the one year anniversary of meeting Alice Waters.  Last year, on this coming Saturday, I met her at the Union Square Farmer’s Market and had a short chat.  It was a great day for me.  As I reflected in my post, I was like a little giddy child-groupie food person.  I had met one of my very favorite idols. Being that I have a very strong deja vu instinct, I have been thinking about that meeting now for a couple of weeks and how it was a little turning point in my inspiration-quotient (Alice being 70, shows no signs of slowing down and travels the world to advance her causes and discuss her ideals, having just opened the Slow Food USA gathering in Torino).  Another is the feeling I should be in my happy-places, Italy every May, June, and September, and Paris  now at Easter and July.  I have begun a new crystallization of memories to blanket over a whole host of others…………

 if this is 70, I’m in! (photo courtesy Katie Parla)

Over the past few years I have become very interested in how people age and what happens to them.  Of course some of what happens to people as they age can not be helped or changed. On the other hand, a big part of it is unconscious and can be changed.  I have found this idea an area of great fodder to dig into.

On one level, my interest deepened when I watched my Mother suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease for over 10 years.  After this happened and I had some time to recover from what I felt was the most devastating culmination of events ever for me – ones that shook my faith in, well, everything, I began to think about the lost promise of my Dad’s life as well.  These are heartbreaking memories for me but as I read yesterday in a recent post on the Brain Pickings Facebook page, quoting Nietzsche, living through tragedy can indeed bring forth a great degree of resolve and inspire you to live your very best life.  And, most curiously, the writings and doings of others have helped me to confirm how important it is to think independently.  Seeing or sensing some small little glimmer of joy and beauty and knowing to seize it into my being were the first steps of reigniting the person I left behind long, long ago.   These are among the things that have crystalized for me how I want to work to live the rest of my life.

And so, the question becomes, do you really want to act your age, or not?  A loaded question, for sure, but one from which we can observe and learn a great deal.

While I am sure my wanderings around, marveling at  and photographing the littlest of things like flower buds and chestnuts I’ve found on the ground while walking the dog, and baking countless batches of scones, as well as writing about them all constantly, are extremely annoying to some people, these small events for me are what have helped awaken me into in a “new” life.  They are, in fact, the foundation of a whole new way of life.  They are what excite me and have given me a whole new purpose, one that I can ironically see, was the essence of my authentic self which I let go of when I was around 10 years old.  What I have learned from thinking about my own parents and from a few people around me who I look to for inspiration, is what I am now as certain of as never before.  That is, for me, you can never give in to mindless days of repetitive tasks, what you may think is expected of you but that you truly don’t want to do, nor to the unconscious attachment to what other people are doing in your present decade of life for want of another option.  Once you step away from these three thoughts and work to attach yourself to what you really love and want to do, you may find the gift that was meant for you, from whatever power above or anywhere else, that you may choose to believe in.  I know how that sounds………

Being “60” sounds daunting.  It comes with many pre-packaged images of a time of life when a lot of people are thinking about winding down.  Lots of people retire from their jobs in their 60s and they are tired and worn out.  If you watch tv, you will see a myriad of drugs, apparatus and surgeries for people like me, who have all the ailments associated with aging beginning to creep in.  I’ve placed all of these on the way-back burner for as long as can be.  I, instead, spend my time looking for people who have blown through their 50s and who are living each day of their lives with the fervor of a 20 year old – and who look at the last 30 years or so years of their lives as perhaps the most incredible opportunity of their lifetime.  I have made a conscious fork in the road – so that I would not end up like my Mom and my Dad, or most-importantly, like the broken-hearted me.  After all, thirty years is a very long time and I am not going to waste it.

The details of the long interim time are really not that material to this point in the story – they may not be any worse than anyone else’s story after all.  It is all in what happens, “after”.

Another lightbulb surprisingly turned on when I began reading Dominique Ansel’s new book.  Because of the press and the vibe all around him, I expected it to be another tome filled up with his newly found ego and fame and magnifying the value of his cronut invention 1000 times over.  How pleasantly surprised and gratified I was to see that this book is indeed not about the Cronut nor about blowing up his fame and fortune. It is about learning to listen to your creative self and impulses and, if you can not act upon them the instant they occur, to park them in a vital part of your memory and go back and work on them later.  Also, it is about staying small so you can keep your efforts authentic – something I admire so very much (like the Roca Brothers).  He has identified with staying close to himself and not letting the destructive world around him take over his true thread.  He is therefore free to experiment, in his own little world of ideas, and by doing this he creates new and beautiful things.

And so, each and every time I am inspired to step into the kitchen to try something new, I am acting on that very impulse that Dominique is so poignantly emphasizing in his book. I will most likely never create anything astounding, but I will have lots of fun trying.

Perhaps this is all why I love morning so very much. It is the dawn of a whole new bundle of opportunities. Some days I can’t decide which direction to go in first. I can walk right by that closet that needs to be cleaned out and say to myself with no guilt at all, doing that will not make any difference in the quality of my life today or ever, it will bring me no joy. And then, I zip up my fleece jacket and step outside the door with my camera, to that whole wide world outside. While I may go to bed in a state of deflation, because the season has changed to a place I don’t particularly love, I know, I will wake up to a new blank page, to write over with the hundreds of places to go, dreams to indulge and learning to do. I am elated by all the possibilities and fun I can have from now until……….

The great, though imperfect promise of life: