Turning Senior at 50

As a woman approaching her 50^th birthday, who has always viewed herself as young at heart, I was shocked to realize that the senior newsletter I picked up at the grocery store was for the 50 year old plus crowd.

I feel cheated. How can it be that we are now seniors at 50 instead of 62? Who makes this standard of age? Who says when we are middle age or seniors?

I don’t mind paying the extra dollar so seniors can have a discount. I don’t think it is fair to drop the age limits because then people will reach their 60’s having lived as a senior for 10 years. At 62, they will feel ten years older and consider themselves well into their senior ages instead of feeling like they just begun the senior years.

We are what we think, right?

I am all for saving a dollar when we can. I’m sure many people ages 50 and over find a senior discount helpful. I realize many people have retired earlier then back in our parent’s day due to progress and changing times. Many people do not have to work into their 60’s to get the benefits like our parents before us but why call ourselves older then we have to be?

50 was middle age because we began to feel the effects of hard work or parenting on our bodies, we began to feel age catch up to us but we were not old yet.

Our youngest children are still in and out of the nest and the family dog is middle aged and still wants to go for all day hikes, the dog is not ready to wait for a dog walker to take him out to potty when we can’t hike anymore.

Yes, we may feel tired having lived 50 years in this world but that doesn’t mean we make our seniors younger and the middle age older does it?

In days gone by, turning 60 was becoming a senior, we had grown to be older and more relaxed with less work to do, our children were older and settled, our time for ourselves came when we felt proud to say we are seniors. Proud that we have finished getting life’s work taken care of and the children settled so that we have fewer worries in our later years of life.

If I will be a senior at 50 then that makes me 12 years a senior at 62 instead of just starting out as a senior like my grandmother did at 62.

I do not feel like a senior at 50. Ask me again in 10 years, even though my back hurts and I am a little slower then 5 years ago.