They were evenings that mixes serious adult past time. Not exactly the kind of topic one wants to pursue after what seems to be a lifetime being under the weather.
Startled by beautiful old faces, lived, groomed and puckered as they maybe, hair grizzled; these glossy contemporaries at the Silver Lake Adult Health Center showed they have lived and not yet found the means to hide it. Their lotions have done well — plus dance, dance, and dance.
Over the weekend, I saw a lot of golden seniors in bundles of accelerated energies. Whirling, stomping and laughing — doing it right, doing it wrong and doing it again. Flinging themselves about with a quiet, free exuberance that was contagious expressing unbridled happiness.
Dance exercise is the latest fad among seniors, would be seniors, and even the young ones. Dancers threw themselves in this new style of dancing with unrestricted moves of magical cultures whirling in the wind, a total involvement in that new dance style. It momentarily frees them from every little fear, including realities that imprisons them.
They move unrestrictedly like magical creatures, whirling in the wind in fun. It doesn’t attempt pursuit of excellence through dancing, just simply jumping up and down in rhythm. The Friday nights at the Manila Terrace “where dancing makes us happy” sounds like a collective chorus, that justifies their new social freedom of expression.
They are dubbed the Generation X…after the baby boomers, before the millennials. They can anticipate reaching more longevity, having spent more than one third of their lives, in large numbers and in what are referred as “older people.”
This comes with many implication and occasional hand wringing. Have they lived differently from their earlier generation, or the later called millennium?
It is reassuring that addressing longevity sights here that focuses on metric related healthy lifestyles which predicts long term outcome.
We can’t unpack the larger set of findings about the generation X – as they’ve already done, all the bright prospects what has to be done, offering flexibility to help their children, travel, make philanthropic gifts, and now enjoying their twilight years on their terms.
The very elderly people often remark that they arrived at old age by surprise — most of their peers didn’t make it. Which is a reminder: next time the conversation turns to longevity, let us talk about the agony!
