You are about to read an article about why Seniors should write to add years to their lives. It's a piece about the importance of writing as an exercise that could help to keep the mind elastic and useful for as long as possible. This in actuality is a self-help article that suggests that a senior who writes every day is less likely to slide even gracefully into forgetting as frequently as seems to be the case. It is meant also to suggest that as Seniors, we have an awful lot to say and there are at times few willing listeners, although thankfully, there are some who are politely attentive as we recall memories rarely told or even, we thought, forgotten. Young people are so much quicker than most of us Senior are. In the time it took to write this piece to a title that first initiated it, and a reply about a need to revise the title and it going "live" on Helium, someone else came up with a piece. It's not all a mind thing, one knows that, it's this Internet thing and computers that boggles some of our minds. You see, for Seniors, for many, at least, it's all about remaining alert, mentally. Not an easy task anymore. There are, already, chinks in the brain's armor.
This piece is not for anybody other than Senior Citizens to read. It's for seniors to read and reflect upon and then to write on any topic we desire to write about. Many of us enjoy doing crossword puzzles and picture puzzles for all the many years we have done them already. We may or may not know that the time and work we put in doing puzzles has added years to our lives. We do crossword and picture puzzles to keep occupied, but we really know that by doing puzzles, our mind is working, our mind is stretched, exercised often to its limits and what we really want is to give our mind a good physical workout so that it will be healthy and functional for us to use in our every day life. The "Back Story" page of Newsweek for June 22, 2009, has an interesting graph entitled, "Can You Cheat Death" and subtitled, "No, but you can negotiate." What we seniors are doing is negotiating a postponement of the body's slow deterioration and that of the mind. What we seniors all seek to avoid or should at least work at postponing is the slow deterioration of a healthy, functional mind. Maybe what we have aging with the body is a mind that is not as sharp as a tack, not quite as responsive with the immediacy and elasticity of recall that we have been used to in our own minds, but a mind, nevertheless, that is still alive for us that can still efficiently recall what we want to recall when we need to, and one that can still function well in the conduct of our daily lives. We want to slow down the natural process of the body's maturation in its unique transitioning from conception to its end of being, out end of being in ceasing to live, in dying. This is what we all work and pray to postpone.
This is why we chose this title, why were asked to rewrite it to make it more cogent, a word puzzle word, for those of us who are inviting others like us to write as a way of staying in the fold, mentally, psychologically connected by our words and deeds to each other and with our loved ones. It is not a certainty that we will fall to mental disease, but we want to avoid it if it as much as possible if a probability in the genes.
If Scrabble or, lately, Sudoku are games that many seniors regularly play, then writing regularly is not that far afield. The idea is to use our most prized possession, our brain and with it, the ability to think in simple and complex ways. The art of thinking extends beyond puzzles; as good as they are at causing one to think. Writing belongs to the genre of activities that add years to our lives as seniors. We should and must write because articles like the one in Newsweek postulates that crosswords will add five years to a person's life or more if the Newsweek "end-piece," mentioned above is to be believed; one assumes that it is based on research.
Our point is that writing as mental exercise will help us to remain intellectually active by being creative in the process. All of us have something to write about, and that is particularly true for us, seniors. There isn't a senior who does not have a good story to tell or a well thought out opinion to share. Most of us have wonderful, personal stories to tell, or we have knowledge of someone else's story to tell from our personal point of view.
We have family stories ranging the gamut from birthing stories to end of life stories, each one special, and most frequently worth the telling if not for strangers then for ourselves to review in our telling of them how things were or how time has added a layer of its own so that some things as we once remembered them are now adjusted for the truths we have discovered over time. These are the daily exercises that we must pursue as entertainment for our brains and as a mind-expanding activity forcing us to recall and reconstruct the knowledge we have managed so far to accumulate. Let us not let it go unrecalled, unreconstructed, unshared.
Some of us may have been writing poetry for years; who knows what Emily Dickinson lurks in a bottom desk drawer just waiting for those same hands to retrieve them rather than those of a stranger if for no other reason than to put them out there so that others feeling similarly might share the feeling expressed long ago. It's not possible, other than to go to the expense of self publishing, to print a little book of poetry, essays, reflections, notes to ourselves for safe keeping, just in case. There are treasures held inside our minds that only those of us holding the key can help the rest of us who don't to gain access. Of course, we are talking about writing. If we are not already writing, it is time to turn to the computer or the pen or pencil and to start writing down all that we can share with friends and family, hour histories, our stories, our poems, our poems, the stories of our life. If we have not started, isn't it time. Isn't it worth the risk to keep our minds working, alive?
Time goes by so fast, and we have done so much that really needs to be shared. It takes time to write, and there has to be a time for starting to write. Now is the time.
There were times when our stories were told in letters, sent and kept by a relative or friend addressee and handed down generation to generation proudly for what they told about us the writer, about personal histories, stories, the anecdotal records of the days where they were, what they did, how they felt.
Who among us still writes a letter? It is more natural in our day to pick up a cell phone if not compose a message for e-mail, a thing we are more unlikely to do as voice mail precedes us or follows us where eve we are.
So this is the call to seniors. Write to keep your mind alive; write down your memories, the ones you hold dear. The ones you tell when asked or repeat when coaxed by the children. What were they like those years when you grew up? Share them even though some may not care. We know that posterity will want to know someday, but, meanwhile, all of us would like to hear your story and your story and all the stories that ought to be told however collected, wherever bound.
And let us not forget to grow older, as we must, with all of our friends while writing our stories and, of course, sharing them with whoever will listen or want to read them some day.