Anti-Aging Remedies

With or without kids, you have to put food on the table. So you slap down the easiest, fastest thing you can find. It is not coincidental that there has been a proliferation of fast-food restaurants everywhere. (There are at least 60 McDonald's restaurants each in New York City and Istanbul.) Only on rare occasions can junk food be considered healthy. In addition to everything else is the realization that you're getting older and feeling bad about that, too.

While we're on the subject of suicide, it does seem that almost daily a name leaps out at you from the obituary page: acquaintances, friends, classmates, heroes, enemies. This is just one of the many ways that you can be reminded of your own mortalitya conclusion to life you never bothered to consider in your immortal youth. Living in a culture that worships youth at the expense of the "golden agers" doesn't help. Early-twentieth-century philosopher and educator John Dewey once said that "we are at present more or less in the unpleasant and illogical condition of extolling maturity and deprecating age." Such an ethos seems to be more and more true when we consider the current image of aging.

Just watch television. Situation comedy, which has often parodied stupid ethnics, subservient women, and comic homosexuals, also portrays older people as out-of-touch, doddering fools fond of retelling the same boring stories and barely able to keep from wetting their pants. Whatever happened to the time when older people were valued for their experience and wisdom?

Fortunately, this perception has been improving. Despite our once famous cry, "Never trust anyone over 30," we suddenly realize that, "Oh my God, this is us now!" Yes, the sheer weight of numbers of the maturing baby boomers has forced society to make that accommodation to age. It shows up in the form of fashion models with lines on their faces, replacing prepubescent types of 20 years ago. I found it interesting to see the lone older male model in a local clothing company's catalogue, dressed for his 30th reunion but unquestionably with a 20-year younger trophy significant other in tow. Rock 'n roll tours are populated now by graying heroes we'd have sworn would have overdosed long ago. They're too smart for that. They'd rather make millions and invest in mutual funds. Even Ozzie Osbourne, whom I saw not long ago, has come a long way, baby, from biting chickens' heads off.

Is anybody out there truly happy about getting old? Of course not. But things do go better if we deal with the reality of aging openly and knowl-edgeably.