"The producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia.
Habit is necessary; but it is the habit of having careless habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive... one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."
-Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray realistically the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, for her novel The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.[1] Among her other well known works are The House of Mirth, the novella Ethan Frome, and several notable ghost stories.
-Wikipedia
I have met my share of old men and women.
When I say “old”, I mean old in mentality and not in physical age.
So how do you determine if they are old in their mentality?
They lack certain enthusiasm towards life.
They seem tired and resentful of what they have been through.
They are resigned to their fate that this is all they can do.
They continue their day by day, never changing, never improving and always bitter.
They suck energy out of the any living place...
For how could life be better if you are not trying to break the chain of habits?
Bad habits like not changing or in Edith Wharton’s words, careless habits become a chain which are often too light to be felt and soon enough too heavy to be easily broken.
They who are still “young” are unafraid to change by continuing to read, listen and learn.
They feel a sense of purpose in life.
They have a curiosity on how things work.
They bring much happiness and satisfaction to their own life just through the sheer joy of learning.
For that, let's continue to stay “young”.
There is so much to learn in life.
There is so much to do and experience.
Let’s continue to encourage life, for what is more interesting than to stay "young" among the "young" people.