I made an offhand comment to my husband the other day that made us both laugh, but I actually think I figured out a major unlock for never feeling old.
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Transcript: Can Men Be Hot In Their 80s?
So I just told my husband, “I have a crush on another man,” and it's not as awkward as it sounds. He was actually on the phone with this man, and he was on speaker, so I heard the other guy talking. When he hung up the phone, I said to my husband, "Oh my god, I have a crush on that guy."
And he was like, "He's 85 years old, Vanessa."
And I was like, "Exactly."
So this guy is actually really, really successful, has an amazing story, and is a public person. I won't share who he is—that would be kind of awkward—but the point is that what I was hearing in this guy's voice was life force.
You know, when we get older, I really think we have a choice of going in one of two directions. We can either be more engaged with life or less engaged with life. And we can either build our life force, or we can use it up.
You see this all the time—people who get older and start complaining about everything, like everything is a problem. "Oh God, technology, it's so terrible, it's such a problem. Oh, the music today—it's so awful, I hate the music today. People aren't connected anymore. People don't read. The food's never quite right." They find something wrong with everything.
I think we have a choice. We can either decide nothing's as good as it used to be and complain about everything, or we can decide, “Hey, this technology is new and different and difficult, but I'm going to learn. I'm going to put on my beginner's mind, even more as an older person than less, and I'm going to build my life force.”
Because, listen, life is hard, and life only gets harder. As you get older, your body starts to hurt and not work as well as it did before. That can limit your energy and your activities, and it's very easy for your life to shrink and become just about the problems that you have.
I'm really not one who's like, “Don't complain, hold it all in.” That was my problem for a long time, and I think for a lot of women of my age, we haven't had the opportunity to complain. So yes, acknowledge the things that are hard. But I think there is a tipping point where we get to this place where we're just marinating in the hardness of it, rather than looking for the delight and the juiciness of it.
This is, I think, why grandkids are so beautiful and babies are so beautiful, because it's almost impossible not to marinate in the beauty and the juiciness of it. But if we can take that energy that we see in a baby—that lights us up—and apply it to things that we could either decide are difficult and impossible, like technology, or delightful opportunities, like technology, as we get older, then you could be a man who a woman 40 years younger has a crush on.
Or you could be a woman who, it doesn’t even matter—it’s not even about having a crush on. You could be a human who has a light and an energy that's attractive and magnetic to other people.
I really think that if we want to be that at that age, we have to start practicing it now, so that someday someone is going to say, "Look at that older woman with the light in her eyes. She still sees the beauty in the world, and she's still learning. And yeah, probably her body hurts, but she's just going to tend to it, she's going to care for it, but she's not going to make that the whole conversation."
I just don't want to be that woman who somebody meets at dinner and is talking about all of her ailments. I cannot imagine anything more boring than that. I'll reserve that for my special friends.
We all need those friends we can complain to, because we need to feel seen and understood. We need that nurture of, "Oh baby, I'm so sorry that's so hard for you." Because life is hard, and it only gets harder. But let's not let that creep into all of our days and all of our lives.
So here's my pact to myself: I want to be excited about stuff a lot more than I am annoyed or down on stuff. Hopefully, I can build that muscle, and it will grow.
And maybe one day, someone will look at me and say, "Hey, she may be old, and her hair may be gray, and she may be wrinkled, but she's cool and fun to be around, and she has the kind of energy I want in my life."
Thanks for listening. All my love.
