Today I met Mary. A woman who had recently taken up wood-carving. Not the most thrilling encounter you might be thinking to yourself..

What if I told you the women teaching her were in their 90’s?

What if I told you she herself is in her 80’s?

AND what if I told you she had a badass wooden walking cane that she carved herself?

“Hell yeah!” I thought.

Age is what you make of it. Sure, that is easy for me to say as a healthy 28-year-old. I do not pretend to know first hand the difficulties of old age. I am not speaking from my own personal experience.

However, I am an observer. And I love people (most days). Especially I have always found the elderly fascinating. They have experienced so much more of life than I, seen so many changes. How do people end up with such drastically different attitudes at the end of life?

What gives some the will to live and others a sort of glum resignation to their impending departure from this world?

In part, I say adventure!

The willingness to experience new things. To learn new things. I think it is a valuable attribute for us in our younger years. We are cultivating attitudes now which will likely follow us for the rest of our lives.

It may be easier to feign relative happiness based on material acquisition and physical health as a young person. We might fool the world for a time, perhaps even ourselves. But eventually it will catch up to us. Our faulty dependence on outer circumstances, on the material and physical world.

As we age, our bodies deteriorate, for some of us more quickly than others. So how do we respond? If our happiness has been dependent on our comfort in a physical and material sense, we may go down a rabbit hole of desperately trying to hold onto our youth and vigor. Then as we fight that hopeless battle, despair sets in. In which case, be prepared for a bitter last chapter.

We have all seen those people. The elderly whose light has long ago died out but whose heart mercilessly keeps beating, leaving them to await death.

I do not relish that fate. In fact it makes me rather sad.

But!

We have also seen the elderly who laugh despite their limitations, whose spirits radiate positive energy. Their aging bodies don’t break their spirit. Adventure and purpose still burns in them and gives them life. They are still human and prone to bad days, but they are living!

What do I mean by “adventure”? Perhaps not what one may think.

One definition is “the exploration of unknown territory.”

This does not necessarily entail skydiving or traveling to a remote corner of the earth. No, it is a spirit. The willingness to try something new. Perhaps learning a new card game, perhaps reading a new book, or taking up a new hobby, like whittling (you go Mary!)

For those of us younger people looking to cultivate a spirit of adventure, sometimes we need look no further than our backyard. Oftentimes we miss the adventure right under our nose.

The key to a happy life is in our attitude. Some of my favorite days are when my inner child comes forth and I am filled with awe and wonder at the simple and eternal things in life.

For me, when I am old and gray (or purple if I take after my spunky paternal Grandma) I hope I am, as a dear friend of mine once deemed herself, a “young person stuck in an old lady’s body.”