A while ago I came up with an idea.  Most of my ideas start in the Pilates studio while I’m in session with my clients.  Which is one of the many reasons that I love my work.  My client was sharing one of her experiences with aging (I can’t remember the actual content of our conversation at this point) and I realized that I’ve learned a lot about what to expect from the aging process by talking to other people.  I also realized that spending time with the elderly can also give me some ideas of what I don’t want to do when I (with blessings) reach my golden years.  So I decided to start a list of tips to my future self to help me grow older with grace.  It’s a short list at this point.  But I figure that putting it here will help it to grow in two ways:  it will remind me to take note of items when they occur to me and hopefully someday others will add their own items to the list by leaving a comment.

I suppose that it goes without saying that the time to start the list is when you are young and haven’t yet lost that youthful perspective.

1).  Have a trusted aesthetician to help you with whiskers, nose and ear hairs.  Because sadly, they begin to appear just about the time that you lose your ability to see close up in the mirror.

2).  Before you wage a complaint about how much things cost, adjust for inflation.  This concept of relativity applies to other areas too.  How heavy things feel depends on how strong you are (relative to how strong you once were).  How fast things go depends on how your body perceives time.

3).  Slowly decrease your food intake as you get older so that you don’t put on a bunch of weight and have 20-30 pounds to lose when your body isn’t as plastic as it used to be.

4).  Cultivate a relationship to your body and it’s functions over the course of your life so that new developments aren’t an earth shattering surprise that you feel the need to talk about all the time. As you are cultivating this relationship with yourself, do the same with those close to you so that you do have people to talk about “these things” with.

5).  Cultivate relationships with people of all ages, but especially those younger than you. That way as those who are older than you cross over out of our material world you will still have good company.

6).  Keep up with your bathing regimen. People prefer the company of good smelling folk.