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Now, with 70 almost here during lockdown, I see how much easier it is at 70 than it was at 30 to live the life I always wanted to live. And that, to me, is the real gift of aging. When you don\u2019t think of death as the end \u2014 and I never did \u2014 getting older is about liberation. It\u2019s about the non-essentials falling away, about not looking over your shoulder for approval and about not making up scary fantasies about the future. Because I have finally learned, as Montaigne put it, that \u201cthere were many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was one of those children who was born old. I\u2019ve never understood the attitude prevailing in much of the western world, where aging is treated like a disease to avoid \u2014 like a party we\u2019re all desperate to be invited to but alarmed the minute we walk through the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As my decades-old notebooks reminded me, I always yearned for the wisdom of old age. It was easier for me, since I come from a culture, after all, that reveres old age. I always loved, for instance, how in Greek monasteries the abbot and the abbottess are referred to as geronda and gerondissa \u2014 \u201cold man\u201d and \u201cold woman\u201d \u2014 even though they are often just in their 40s or 50s. \u201cOld man\u201d and \u201cold woman\u201d are titles bestowed on them not because of their age, but because of their wisdom and closeness to God. Indeed, aging is associated with wisdom in nearly every spiritual and philosophical tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDo not fear the aging of the body,\u201d wrote Lao Tzu, \u201cfor it is the body\u2019s way of seeking the root.\u201d In The Analects, Confucius depicts the cycle of life as a journey that takes us closer to the divine and to our own hearts. \u201cAt 15 I set my heart on learning,\u201d he writes. \u201cAt 30 I took my stand. At 40 I came to be free from doubts. At 50 I understood the decree of heaven. At 60 my ear was attuned. At 70 I followed my heart\u2019s desire without overstepping the line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Job, we\u2019re told that \u201cwisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to the old.\u201d And remember that Moses was 80 when he led the Israelites out of Egypt! In Hinduism, life, like the seasons, is divided into four. The first is that of a student. The second is about raising a family. The third is the beginning of retreat, and the fourth is complete detachment from worldly things. The paradox of the good life is how to be detached from worldly things while being fully engaged in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, that\u2019s what I love most about turning 70: being fully engaged building a company around one of the coolest challenges we are facing \u2014 changing human behavior so that we can lead healthier and more productive and empathetic lives \u2014 alongside amazing people, many of whom are less than half my age. And doing it with more joy, less stress, less sweating the small stuff, and without being frenetically obsessed with every hourly result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What sums it up is moving from struggle to grace \u2014 finally recognizing that life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen, and never forgetting that no matter how caught up we are in the world, life is shaped from the inside out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, there are the ancient traditions of my own home country. For the Greeks, philosophy wasn\u2019t an academic exercise \u2014 it was a manual for daily life. \u201cPractice death daily,\u201d Socrates said. And the Romans would carve \u201cMM,\u201d memento mori \u2014 remember death \u2014 on statues and trees, not out of morbidity but because death is what gives purpose to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem with thinking of aging as only a progressive loss is that we lose sight of all that we gain. And if we\u2019re lucky and remain healthy, there\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t continue to build and create. I founded The Huffington Post at 55, and Thrive Global 11 years later at 66. And I\u2019ve never been more eager to keep learning \u2014 and unlearning!<\/p>\n\n\n\n On his 89th birthday, Nelson Mandela announced the formation of The Elders, a group made up of leaders from business, politics and nonprofits brought together to solve urgent global problems. \u201cThis group derives its strength,\u201d Mandela said in his launch speech, \u201cnot from political, economic or military power, but from the independence and integrity of those who are here. They do not have careers to build, elections to win, constituencies to please. They can talk to anyone they please, and are free to follow paths they deem right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This kind of independence and wisdom are of course available to us at any age. But they are so much easier to tap into when we\u2019re liberated from our fears of failure and disapproval. \u201cCourage,\u201d Plato said, \u201cis knowing what is not to be feared.\u201d And that\u2019s what I love about turning 70: knowing what is not to be feared has me feeling more myself than at any other time in my life. Maybe because there is much less time ahead of me than behind me, I don\u2019t squander it on things that don\u2019t matter, living in the shallows and letting life\u2019s mystery pass me by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I paged through my old notebooks, I wanted to shout advice at myself across the years \u2014 telling the younger me not to worry or doubt so much, or to just go ahead and take that risk. My hope is that we will collectively come to see aging not as something to be avoided but as something to be embraced. And instead of looking at those fearless and wise elders among us and thinking, \u201cI want to be that way when I\u2019m old,\u201d tapping into what is wisest, boldest and most authentic within us and living each day from that place, however young or old we may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally published on ThriveGlobal<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We all know what matters in life \u2014 so why do we wait to act on it? By Arianna Huffington, Thrive Global Founder & CEO Next week, on July 15, is my 70th birthday, coming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[631,633,632],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-70-years","tag-arianna-huffington","tag-birthday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/towncryyers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Arianna_TCR-814x1024.jpg?resize=814%2C1024&ssl=1\")
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