The topic has been on my mind lately and I'm thinking through my feelings. I'd appreciate hearing others' experiences and opinions to help with my approach.

For context, I have several close family members, including a parent, approaching retirement age. As they've been getting their affairs in order, I've been finding myself the recipient of either gifts or posthumous requests, which are sentimental to them but not me.

Its nothing outrageous. Examples of gifts are things like little decorations/mementos/childhood crafts, long held by them but which I've never seen before. In terms of requests, think along the lines of: I'd really love for you to learn X instrument because you're musical, or I'd love for you to take care of X income-generating hobby I started but you like (Im being a little vague).

I want to respect their feelings (even when I'm not overly sentimental) and help them feel comfortable as they get older, but I want also don't want to outright lie (eg, requests I can't promise to keep) or accrue things that, to me, are clutter.

How have you approached this, or similar scenarios with aging or dying loved ones? Did your opinions or feelings change as they continued to age or passed?

Given all the noise about whether President Biden is frail or cognitively compromised, I thought it would be interesting to informally survey Tildes denizens for their beliefs about aging.

These are purely conversational questions, each of which is so broad it could be its own topic - I have no skills as a demographer or pollster.

I also realize there may be national or ethnic definitions around who counts as venerable as opposed to senile, so I'll ask you to include nationality or relevant ethnicity in your response.

1. What decade of your life are you in - < 20, twenties, thirties, etc.
2. In what decade (see above) do you think old age begins?
3. What characterizes being "old" to you? For example, loss of sexual attractiveness, diminution of physical strength or stamina, illness, loss of mental agility, etc.
4. At what age do you think you will be too old to function as you want to in life?
5. Do you have experiences of aging (personal, family, acquaintances, caregiving roles) that give you concerns or hopes about your own future?
6. Do you believe age confers any benefits, and what might those be?
7. Assuming no catastrophic health events, do you believe life will seem better or worse to you as you age?
8. Do you feel like aging people are a burden to those younger?
9. Do you find yourself using pejorative words about age?

Full disclosure: There is evidence that what you believe about aging influences how well you age.

1. I'm in my 50's, US, ethnically Jewish.

2. My current inclination is to say that old age begins around age 75 in general, but I've met people who were what I'd call old at 30 and young at 90.

3. I know that various measures of peak {insert attribute here} start declining much earlier. 75 - 80 seems to be the point at which many things break down irreparably for the vast majority of people. That's the age range where the ability to live independently drops off, and that's what I count as "old".

4. I hope to be independent for at least another 25 years, but that's already somewhat determined by a limiting progressive condition. My experiences with aging are biased by highly educated people and super-ager relatives. There have been several centenarians in my family, each of whom was cognitively intact until death even if they were no longer completely independent physically.

5. I believe age confers the ability to recognize patterns based on cumulative experience. That's what passes for wisdom. The ability to acquire new memories and skills can be more rapid with connections to the previous body of knowledge. Socializing is definitely easier with many years of practice and the dulling of anxieties - the worst that can happen usually already did. For better or worse, people look up to you as a survivor and teacher...

6. Life will probably get better with age. I've had an extended time without a job followed by a job purely chosen, so I can say that "retirement" is likely to be much more productive and enjoyable both for self and society. I expect old age to be a time of reconnecting with others and doing the charitable activities I don't have flexibility to engage in now.

7. This is a tough one. At a general scale, we're encouraged to work as hard as possible to hoard resources that will ensure we have the means to maintain independence and purchase care when we're old. Rather, we could live lighter, share more, and build relationships which can sustain us. I count myself fortunate to avoid the burden that many others have endured when dealing with debilitated or demented relatives. And yet there are so many ways in which nations and cultures other than the U.S. do a better job of sharing care.

8. There's a lot of online discourse about greedy boomers, crumbly conservatives, and so on, but I think those are manufactured divisive narratives. I've been acquainted with so many people over the years who don't fit neatly into demographic or political boxes. On that evidence, I don't think any generation has a greater balance of virtue or vice compared to the others.

9. I use "adulting" and "old fart" self-denigratingly. I follow r/oldhagfashion for actual IDGAF style ideas.

Whizy Kim

The Rejuvenation Olympics, an online leaderboard launched by tech millionaire Bryan Johnson earlier this year, takes the rivalry of the rich to the next level. The game? “Reversing” your age

Link to the article

Participants compete not on physical abilities but on how quickly and by how much they can slow their “biological age.”

Competitors do this mostly by adjusting their diets (like which macronutrients and supplements they consume), being physically active, and retesting their “age” regularly. They’re not actually reverting to a more youthful version of themselves — that’s not biologically possible. Rather, these competitors are racing to see who can age the slowest; as the Rejuvenation Olympics website quips, “You win by never crossing the finish line.”

The point isn’t merely being healthy. It’s laser-precision optimization of his health.

Johnson, for example, never eats pizza or drinks alcohol. It’s simply not a part of his algorithm. “I was just a slave to myself and my passions and my emotions and my next desire,” he said in an interview with Vice Motherboard. That doesn’t mean he never stumbles, but when he does, he calls it an “infraction,” as though he has committed a minor crime.

Leaderboard

Johnson tops the Rejuvenation Olympics leaderboard; he created the game along with Oliver Zolman — who leads Johnson’s team of 30-plus doctors and other health experts — and TruDiagnostic, an epigenetics lab based in Kentucky that provides the biological age test kits that participants in the Olympics must submit. The cheaper version costs $229. The more expensive one, at $499, provides more data on your results, including how habits like smoking or drinking alcohol have impacted a person’s aging speed.

Ultramarathon

It’s a contest that participants hope never ends — the most ultra of ultramarathons. The most dedicated members in the longevity community are, in essence, spending their lives obsessing over living. Says Lustgarten: “I plan on doing this for at least the next 70-plus years.”