What's So Good About an Octogenarian Anyway?

by Julie Grenness, in Australia.

Over-sixty? Think that is old? What about the new age of octogenarians?
 Not long ago, they were passive recipients on walking frames, spoon fed in nursing homes.

But, look at the Queen, Prince Phillip, the old Queen Mother, Nelson Mandela, (he remarried when he was eighty years old), Barbara Cartland, (wrote all her life), and Fay Weldon, (in her nineties, writing and teaching).

Octogenarians now embrace their age, they ‘don’t need no rocking chair’. Sure, the eighty year old body can still have physical issues. In general, people are living longer to an older age, with contentment.

At sixty, we may fear becoming really old, but octogenarians do express greater life satisfaction, and more acceptance of the feeling that they are survivors, and can’t change the world anyway.

According to research, in that U.K., twice as many eighty year olds, are divorcing, and some even remarry, after dating again, being widowed or divorced. The new young—octogenarians!