Seniors, now is the time to age powerfully! Wanda Moen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing with the Arbor Company, joined us at our newest Arbor location, Arbor Terrace Acworth, to share some tips on embracing the years ahead with confidence in an anti-aging world.
With the average age of women increasing from 25 in the early 1900s to 40 in 2024 and data projecting that there will soon be more people over the age of 65 than 18 and younger, it’s time to dive deeper into the question “what is old?”
Wanda answers that question and so many more. From understanding more about our minds and diving into the research, she proves that it’s time we all accept the fact that there is simply no such thing as “old."
Video Transcript
Hi, everyone, and welcome to an episode of Senior Living Live. My name is Mary Cate Spires, and I'm so excited. We are doing this episode on the sun porch at our newest Arbor location, Arbor Terrace Acworth in Acworth, Georgia. And I'm joined today by Wanda Moen, who is The Arbor Company's vice president of sales and marketing. Thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with me on this very busy day.
Well, thank you for having me and squeezing this in. Yeah.
Right. We always try. So we're gonna talk about a really interesting topic today. So aging powerfully. Let's get into that. What does that even mean?
Yeah. Aging powerfully, you know, nowadays, everybody is kinda obsessed with how old are you and antiaging. And there's lots of campaigns out there about antiaging, or there's now campaigns out there about hashtag proaging. Right? And so when you think about age, like, we're obsessed with age and what is old. I wanna spend some time defining what is old and what is the difference between aging and being old.
Okay. I know for me, I feel old when I don't understand a slang or a hip new term, and aging is probably when my back hurts. Yeah.
How Do You Define Old?
Right. Yep. Yeah. There's lots of things. So, you know, I ask lots of different people what old means to them. Right? And I have six grandchildren, and so ranging from fourteen down to a newborn, which isn't gonna talk to me. But, you know, I ask them what's old. And I also asked twenty year olds what is old. And you literally, everyone's answer is different. So what old means to you is completely different to what it means to someone else. It's interesting, like, in the United States, we use the Webster dictionary to define everything. How do you think Webster defines old?
Many years of wisdom.
You would think. I actually I'm gonna look at my notes so I get it right, but it says Webster literally just says lived a long time, not young. So if Webster can't even define what is old, and if you're looking at, in today's society, like what is the difference between aging and old? And why do we have to correlate them together? So I'd love to share some statistics with you and some data with you if you.
Yes. You know I love data. I love data.
So when you look at just the United States, we're only gonna look at our population here. In the 1900s, the average age was, I believe it was mid 20s. K? If you fast forward to 1950, the average age was 29. K? And if you fast forward to 2010, the average age was 35. So I want you to fast forward to today. It's 2024, the end of 2024. Time just seems to be going so very quickly. How old do you think the average age of a woman is today in the United States?
I didn't know this was gonna be a math test, Wanda.
Just a little bit. Just a little bit.
I'm gonna go with 38.
Actually, the average age of a woman today in the United States is 40. The average age between men and women is 38 point, because I wanna be very precise, 8. Right? So by the 2024 rolls around, like
You'd be living a long time.
But think about it. If it's 2024 right now, 2034 is just ten years away. So in just ten years, think about how old we're gonna be in ten years.
I'd prefer not to.
I think after this, you're gonna embrace aging. But in 2034, they're projecting that there will be more people over the age of 65 than there is under the age of 18 or younger. Wow. So in the United States alone, there is going to be more people 65 and older. K. I mean, just let that sink in. So when I go back to the question of what is old, really, if you looked in 1900s, they would have said 29 is old. If you would have looked at, you know, 2010, they would have said 30s are old. But now we're looking at 2034 where the majority of the United States population will be 65 or older. So do you know why that is?
No. Why?
So it's a combination of a couple of things. So we, of course, are living longer. Thank you, science. And also understanding how to better care for ourselves. But another thing that's really changed is how many children we're having. So we're having less children. In 1965, I believe it was, in the 1960-ish, we had on average 2.44 kids. And today, on average, we have 1.7.
Wow.
I don't know where the .44 and the .7. Just those laws of averages.
You know? Just slice them in half. Yeah.
So, you know, we are living much, much longer. And very interesting fun fact too that, I mean, nowadays, our life expectancy is 79 years of age. By 2034, life expectancy is 82. So when you really come back to what is old and if you think about it, in the 1960s, the average life expectancy was 66.5.
Wow.
So in the 1960s, if you live to be older than 66 years of age, you were considered old.
Which is nothing now.
It's nothing. It's nothing. If, you know, if I called my husband who is about to be 63 years of age old, he would just shake his head at me. I am not old, like, still vibrant and full of life and working a full time job. So I think we have to change a little bit about how we view aging and what we view as old.
Aging Powerfully: How to Embrace the Process
Mhmm. So I'm assuming you've got some tips for us on how we can age powerfully.
I do. It's interesting because our bodies do age. We know that when we wake up in the morning and it hurts to get up. Or I've now gotta wear glasses everywhere I go because I can't see words in front of me. So our bodies do age, but our minds actually age differently than our bodies. They age much slower. So if I asked you, Mary Cate, how old do you feel most days?
Oh, I would still say younger than I am.
Right. How old? Like, give me an age.
I am, like, 26 ish.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because if you asked me how old mentally I was, I would say somewhere between 39 and 40. And I'm nowhere near 39 and 40. And so that's true of everyone. I want everybody to stop and think for a moment and think about how old mentally do you feel. And that's what you need to start looking at. It isn't so much that, yes, I'm getting old because I have to wear glasses. Shame on you. That's just your body saying, I need to see better. Or your back hurts when you get out of bed because you didn't sleep well. Your bones are aging. Yes. But mentally, you've really still got a lot to offer, and there's no such thing as old. I think I've proven that.
Yeah.
If you look at how we've aged across the decades in the United States.
Right. Just gonna keep getting older.
You're just gonna keep getting older. And that's the beauty of it. It's funny because the antiaging campaigns that are out there right now have a lot to do with taking better care of yourself. They're wonderful campaigns. They're about letting your hair go gray, embracing your wrinkles. My #proaging campaign is really more about embrace the fact that of all that you've learned. Right? It isn't so much about, yes, your hair is gray. If you don't want gray hair, dye your hair. If you don't want wrinkles, get Botox. But don't call yourself old.
Right.
If you look at the generations, the baby boomers were from 1946 to 1964. And what they're most known for is activism, social change, and they were freedom seekers. Right? They're a Beatlemania. I mean, lots of things. They have the land mooney. They actually created neighborhoods. Everyone lived in a city. And then when everyone returned home from war, they created what we know today as suburbs. Yeah. And they created consumerism.
Sure. Yeah. That's huge.
You want the toaster. Right? Right. I mean, no one had a toaster until neighborhoods. And if you look at Gen Xers, I mean, Woodstock, MTV, pop culture, I'm sorry for video games, but we created video games. But we also live through energy crisis, massive layoffs. These are knowledge you've accumulated over the years. We are Gen Xs. We're known as the latchkey kids. And the reason being is that we're very self reliant and flexible because we had to be. Right? So these isn't about I'm getting old. You need to think about all the things that you've accomplished, the plans that you've written, you've executed. 55 percent of all start ups in the United States started by a Gen Xer.
Wow. And I know for me at least, you don't really think about all you've accomplished until you can kinda think about yourself, you know, ten years earlier.
Yeah.
It's like, wow. You really feel, I mean, you have to take that time to really have that moment of reflection.
Mhmm.
And be proud of yourself.
Be very proud of yourself and think to yourself, what more can I do or what more do I want to do? It's how we change, how we change how people view aging is how we change our own perceptions of aging. There's a whole exercise. Someday, we'll do a bigger one on changing your perception of aging. But if you think about the knowledge you've accumulated and how can you take that knowledge and help the next generation, you know? Yes, when my grandson texts me and talks to me, I have to say English, please. But I'm learning. Right? I'm learning to translate whatever that language is. I am learning very much so to translate it. But I'm also sharing with him and helping him be a better person. And I think that's what you gotta look at when you think about aging. It's not that you're getting old. In the two generations, the baby boomers, and my generation, we are family oriented very much. And so senior living and asking for help can sometimes be a struggle. Yeah. Because we wanna be all and do all because we've proven we've done it here.
Right.
That's just who we are.
The Power of Senior Living: Embracing Support and New Beginnings
How can someone who does need help in terms of needing to move into senior living or even deciding they wanna downsize, how do they, how can you help them understand that it's okay? You're still aging powerfully.
Mhmm. It is no longer about getting old. You know? We are all about that American dream. Climb the corporate climb that ladder. Climb that corporate ladder. Buy that house. Buy that great car. Nowadays, as you are getting older, we're aging. Right? We're embracing that there's so much more that we have. So it isn't about giving up something. It's about gaining something. And so when you look at, look I bought this beautiful house. Yeah. You did. Check that box. What else is on the list? Because you have the ability to do it and do not care what others think about you. A lot of it is like, well, I need help with my mom. I don't wanna be the daughter that says I can't do it all. Right. You can't do it all. Senior lives isn't about taking away your right to be a daughter.
It's giving it back to you.
It's about, it's about helping you. Right? Partnering alongside of you and know that mom's well taken care of or dad is well taken care of while you're out chasing that next dream. You know, active adult communities are pretty popular right now. They're popular because people want to get rid of the large houses. They want to start a new chapter. They wanna travel the world. They wanna learn a language. They wanna do a start up. Right? That's what life is about right now. So don't look at it as I'm getting old. You look at it as I'm aging powerfully. I've accumulated wisdom, knowledge, emotional intelligence, and I can tackle life, not a next journey, not a next chapter. There's no next about it. It's your life. Continue living it. And before you know it, we'll be living to be 90 and 95, and hopefully hopefully, people will stop looking at a number as being old. I'll leave you with this, and that is, how old do you think the oldest person is who graduated from college?
Like, this year?
In the last couple of years. Yeah.
The oldest person, I don't know, 45?
95.
Wow.
She's a woman who lives in Kansas, and you realize she had thirty credits left. And the one thing she wanted was her degree. So that didn't stop her. She went back to college at 95 and got her degree.
Wow.
And so when you think about, well, my body doesn't let me. Because remember our body ages differently mind. So, hey, if your body's aging and you can't physically do the things you want to do, you can still mentally do the things you want to do. How old do you think the oldest person is to run a marathon?
Well, I do know that somebody in one of our communities is about to run a marathon, so I'm gonna go with 92.
Oh, actually, that's awesome.
Yeah. Look at me.
There is a gentleman who started running at the age of 89, and, by the time he was 92 he ran three marathons. Wow. The one in London, one in Toronto, and I forget the third one that he ran. But it's about we stop saying I can't do that because I'm too old. There is no such thing anymore as old.
Just wipe it from our language. I was gonna say embrace the old, but we need to embrace the aging.
We embrace aging and embrace everything that you've learned. And go tell your story. Go tell your story. The world today needs your story, good or bad, because we learn from mistakes that we made. So if it's a fabulous story, share it. Even if it's a bad story, share it, because that's how we learn. And that's how the next generation will learn, and the next generation will learn.
Yeah. That's amazing. Well, I'm really empowered now, so thank you so much for this chat. This has been absolutely fantastic. And I know we've had a busy day.
It's been crazy. Yes.
Yes. But thank you. This has been great. For all of our viewers out there, I hope you're as inspired as I am now. If you are interested in more episodes like this or even some webinars, all resources on senior living and aging, you can go to seniorlivinglive.com. But for now, that's it everybody. Bye.
