Maybelle lives with her daughter, Ella, in a two-bedroom house in rural Nevada. At 76 years old, Maybelle controls her type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure as best she can. Years of caring for her ailing husband left little time for exercise and little money for health checkups. Breaking her hip didn\u2019t help with mobility. She uses a walker, though she doesn\u2019t go out much.<\/p>\n
But Maybelle loves to paint. She\u2019ll sit for hours creating landscapes that she donates to a local charity to sell. And she sings. Maybelle and Ella sing a hymn every night before bed\u2014a brief but welcome respite in Ella\u2019s stressful day. And she loves. She doles out words of wisdom whenever her 24-year-old grandson will lend an ear.<\/p>\n
In Vail, CO, Ralph, a 76-year-old former business executive, maintains a season pass to the ski slopes and travels around the world with friends, hiking and bicycling in magical landscapes Maybelle only imagines. His hometown newspaper recently profiled him as an inspirational citizen. His doctor was quoted as saying, \u201cRalph sets a standard we should all aspire to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question: Who\u2019s aging more successfully?<\/p>\n
Academics have been debating theories of successful aging for decades. They\u2019re trying to identify what it takes to have a good old age so we can all follow the prescription, ideally starting in middle age or before. But the criteria have proven difficult to pinpoint. Many attempts have all but designated groups of people as failures at aging, even though they thought they were doing pretty well, thank you very much.<\/p>\n
At least, though, these theories promote the possibility of a fulfilling, active old age. Not long ago, that particular focus was revolutionary.<\/p>\n
Old and Only Getting Worse<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1984, screaming teenagers celebrated the launch of the irreverent MTV Video Music Awards, and the popular movie Footloose<\/em> preached freedom for young people against the tyranny of stuffy, middle-aged fogies. To be young was to be free and cool.<\/p>\n And to be older? Think Murder She Wrote<\/em>, which also premiered in 1984, starring Angela Lansbury as an amateur detective. Neat, huh? Yet Washington Post<\/em> critic Tom Shales described Lansbury\u2019s character as \u201ca diminutive old auntie\u201d and a \u201ccute and cuddly\u2026granny Mary Poppins.\u201d Lansbury was 58.<\/p>\n If 58 was \u201cold,\u201d what was 78, 88\u202698? Just plain sad. People in later life were likely to be viewed in terms of the four D\u2019s: dependency, disease, disability and depression, wrote Kansas State University professor Rick J. Scheidt and colleagues in a 1999 article in the Journal of Applied Gerontology<\/em>. Aging meant declining, and there was little positive about it.<\/p>\n Before the next century rolled around, however, that view would change.<\/p>\n