Successful Aging

Successful Aging

Successful aging, to me, means that someone can become older and older while minimising the negative factors that you normally think about when someone ages, such as losing their physical or mental functionallity or simply put, their life expectancy going downhill as result of aging unsuccessfully. If I became older and was satisfied with how my life has gone thus far, and how it is in the present (as an elderly person) then that may also be deemed successfully aging to me. I would think many people would agree that one of the factors that attribute to aging successfully is how active the person is. As we get older, maintaining good physical health and functionality plays an increasingly important role in facilitating mobility and facilitating daily tasks, fulfilling social roles, and participating in recreational activities.

For my paper I decided to interview my grandma Toni. I informed my grandma of the general theme of this interview, being that it is on the subject of aging successfully and her perception of aging. I asked my grandma what her thoughts on aging are and my grandma told me that for her aging was hard after 50 years old because she couldn’t work anymore due to health problems, even though she still wanted to work. My grandma also had lymphoma several years ago and successfully beat it so she brought up that she has more energy nowadays compared to when she