Disclaimer: If I sound a bit short, abrupt or even rude sometimes, it is because I am talking to myself.

To grow old is a blessing that not everyone is granted. To age gracefully is a choice that not everyone makes. But it is a choice that you can make at any time. Since I am 70 this year, 2025, and so have entered the Last Lap Club, I thought I would share some reflections about ageing gracefully. That term – Ageing Gracefully – was something my father always spoke about and as I have seen others ageing, some gracefully, others painfully, I see the importance of getting it right. After all, if you must do it, it is best to get it right and do it well. So, here are five essential things to do.

1. Accept it: The first thing to do about ageing is to accept it. You are 70 years old. Not, ‘70 years young.’ Saying that is a pathetic attempt at denying reality. Age is not a number. It is real. If you don’t believe me, ask your knees. Or any other body part which feels the years. What’s also real and powerful is what you choose to do about it. Focus on that and not on trying to fool yourself. You are not fooling anyone else, believe me. If you don’t accept it, you will try to fight it and that is not a battle that you can win. I have seen many people get themselves into serious trouble pretending to be 20 when they were 60 and 70 and then contemplating their foolishness in hospital. You are 70. Act like 70.

Choose dignity over looking pretty – standards are different. Don’t dye your hair or beard. ‘Greybeard’ is a title of honor. Wear ‘safe and comfortable’ shoes. And clothes that are comfortable and dignified. Don’t try to look 20. You are not. And you will look ridiculous. Sit and put on your trousers and shoes. Sit in the shower. NEVER stand on one leg unless you have something to hold. Never try to slip your feet into slippers as you walk. Yes, you could and did all this until you were 50, but today you are not 50. The sooner you accept that, the healthier, happier, and wiser you will be. Enjoy the honor that comes with age, at least in societies that value and respect their elders. Being an elder is a privilege that must be earned. You did. Now enjoy it. Don’t waste it trying to deny it and pretending to be a teenager.

Having said that, the biggest trap is sloth. Just laziness. The temptation to sleep late. To sit in front of the TV all day. To mindlessly scroll social media apps and so on. The heaviest load to lift is the blanket, the comforter. But lift it, you must. The good news is that once you get out of bed, half the battle is won. And then when you hit the road and your adrenaline kicks in, you are flying. Fight that laziness, otherwise it will kill you as surely as a poison.

2. Routine: The best tool to beat sloth is a robust routine. Harness the power of routine – especially if you are freshly retired. Treat RETIRED as a curse word. It is. For you. Wise people NEVER retire. They simply change their goals. They still lead purposeful lives. You retire when they plant you to push up the grass. Until then you are gainfully employed. MOST IMPORTANTLY always have a goal that you’re working towards. A clear definable goal with metrics. Not something vague that sounds noble. It must be in your control. You should have metrics to measure it, and it should give you satisfaction.

For this, the biggest enabler is having the right kind of friends. Your friends list needs to be checked and edited. Simple check – keep anyone who believes in living a purposeful life and remove anyone who doesn’t. That’s it. Friends are powerful. If you have a group of friends who are walkers, you will walk every day. If you are with foodies, especially in Calicut (Kozhikode) or Hyderabad, you will be on a See-food diet. You will eat whatever you see, and it will show and extract its price. The real price of the food is never on the restaurant bill but on the hospital bill that will follow. This is where you must look at the adage, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’, in an entirely different way.

Incidentally, I didn’t list no smoking, no alcohol, no drugs, no social media (that’s a drug), no computer games, nothing that doesn’t challenge your mind, because that’s a no brainer. Anyone doing any or all these things is a sucker. No point in wasting time with them. It’s their life. They want to blow it away, most welcome. You may ask, ‘Do people in their 70’s spend time on social media? Check your WhatsApp feed. The majority of mindless messages about everything under the sun come from people who live north of the 60’s. They have too much time and spend it wasting yours. Please don’t join that gang. It is big enough as it is and doesn’t need new members.

Please remember that all social media works with the algorithm that sends you more of what you watch. If you watch Covid news, you will get Covid mortality details until you are afraid to breathe. If you watch war news, you will begin to believe that there is nowhere safe to live in the world. If you watch news about hunger, super yachts, cruises, football, cricket, soccer, same difference. You will live in a world of the super-rich or the super-poor, gamers, holiday makers or whoever. All of them totally unreal. Live in the real world in which you can see real people. Talk to them. Build relationships, grow friendships, share food, stories, hopes, and aspirations. Donate time, talent, and effort to help others and create a better world. None of that will happen on FB, Instagram, Snap Chat, WhatsApp or anything else. The real world is affected by real people doing real things. Get real.

3. Alzheimer’s: The challenges of old age are different. The biggest one is to keep the brain active and healthy (keep Alzheimer’s and dementia away) and keep loneliness at bay. That means having a purpose in your life which will help you to make new friends and have a sense of fulfillment.

The biggest, most powerful healthy-brain hack is to read. Read everything and read it again. There is no such thing as reading too much. I love reading biographies and history including historical and science fiction. Don’t watch TV at all. If you have a TV in the house, call 911.  Treat it like an intruder and get rid of it right away. It is the biggest deterrent to reading. Important news will come to you in different ways. What you will see on the TV is not news anyway. It is propaganda and mind steering for those whose minds it can access. Save your mind from this toxic influence.

Another amazingly powerful tool is to learn something new. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is something you didn’t know before. Art, singing, a new language (that is the best one and the more difficult the language, the better), a new skill like carpentry, plumbing whatever. Get a degree. Become an attorney at 70. A pilot, a captain of a sailing boat. A mathematician, a business or political analyst. The idea is to do something that stretches the brain. Something that will get it to produce more neurons, build new neural networks. Don’t worry if what you learn is difficult to do. That is the whole idea. It is not for itself but for what it will do for you. Just as your entire body aches when you start lifting weights but that is a sign that you are growing strong, so also with the brain. I enrolled in a two-month immersion program in the Arabic language in the summer of 2023 and stayed in the hostel in Bennington College, Vermont.

For two months I experienced the life of an American undergraduate, ate my body weight in tofu (how I hate the stuff!!!), walked six miles every day and sat in class where I was three times the age of most of my classmates and older than the teachers. I for a GPA score of 4.9 and was voted the most popular person on campus. But ask me how I felt every week the night before the weekly test. Sometimes I wept with frustration and regretted the day I decided to enroll in the program. But today I am so happy that I did. Not only did I improve my knowledge and fluency in Arabic, but I had a unique experience which I learned a great deal from. As a bonus, I also made some very good friends. An active brain is a healthy brain and doesn’t get old, no matter how old the body becomes. Learning new things makes the brain stronger.  

4. Silence is power. Keep your mouth shut. Old people love to talk. Especially to tell people how to live their lives. Something like what I am doing now. If you must do it, do it like this. Write and blog and post it and read the comments. That is safe. Speaking it out is not safe and will drive people away. Don’t give free advice. Here is a simple test. Ask yourself, ‘Did he come to me or am I going to him?’ Don’t go. If you went and then you suddenly remembered this advice, get up and leave. Don’t criticize and look for faults. Look at yourself and count your own instead.

This is one of the most irritating habits of old people. They tell others how to lead their lives. If someone asks you for advice, tell them that there is a fee and that you believe that the essence of 70 years of live experience is worth paying for. That is why you never give free advice. If they agree, they will pay for it. If they don’t think it is worth the payment, then they don’t need your advice. Save your breath. Have a fee in mind. I would recommend what attorneys normally charge; US $ 250 per hour. Don’t advise anyone who won’t pay. Return the money if you like or give it to someone else in need. But NEVER GIVE FREE ADVICE. It is like stale bread. It has NO VALUE.

Enjoy the fact that you don’t need to argue much less to win any argument. Experience the power of walking away. Physically and mentally. Let go, relax, give up the need to control. Someone else is in charge today and even though you may think that you would have done it better, it is not your shift now. So, walk away. Saves you enormous stress and gives a great sense of relief.

In your conversations, stay away from three taboo topics. Religion, politics, and your health. Your religion is your own. It is private. You don’t need to justify or explain your beliefs to anyone. If someone asks you, tell them. If they don’t, let it remain a mystery. Practice comfortably with confidence. Let your religion be reflected in the goodness that you spread around you as you live by it. As they say, ‘Religion is what happens after the prayer.’ If you are not spreading goodness when you practice your religion, you need a change.

Likewise for your politics. If your politics divides people and teaches you to hate others, to look down on them and all the rest of the garbage that is peddled today, then it needs to change. Practice the politics of respect for others, inclusivity, openness, integrity, compassion, standing up for the weak, speaking up for the voiceless, taking care of the environment, of commons and in building bridges. Not walls. If your politics doesn’t fit this bill then it needs to change.

Your medical conditions are interesting only to your doctor and that too because you are paying him to listen to you. So, keep them for him. Don’t talk about your ailments to anyone else. Likewise, about your GOOD OLD DAYS. Let’s face it… They were never as good as we make them out to be. They were days. And they became as good or bad as we made them for ourselves. Learn the lessons. That has value. Not talking about how the world was perfect when I was 20. It wasn’t and I would not want to go back there for anything at all.

5. Live long or live well: Long life is not in our hands and it’s not something to desire. But life quality is in our hands. The secret is simple. Eat 1/3 of what you eat now. No sugar. Low carbs, high protein diet. Eat one meal in 24 hours. No snacking. No cheating. No exceptions whatsoever. Sleep until you feel rested. And exercise 3X of what you do now. Sustained exercise. Not walking around the house. Walk at least 10,000 steps (you must count… your exercise app will do it) per day. That is 5 miles. And lift weights. The older you get the more important lifting weights is. It’s not to build muscle but to strengthen muscle and increase bone destiny. Walk or wheelchair. That is the choice.

As for looking healthy, genetics plays a big part, but the key is to have realistic standards. Change your icons. Better still, become an icon. Get comfortable in your own skin (I don’t mean in the ‘round is a shape’ way). I mean accept your wrinkles. Be happy with change. Be trendy with dignity. Don’t follow fads or try to keep up with teenagers’ language and interests. You’re in a different class now. With 70 years of life experience. Think of how to get value for that. Public opinion doesn’t matter. It never did, but like most people we probably chased it. Now it matters even less. Forget what people think. They don’t. They have better things to do than to think about you. Change your language. Become kinder, less critical, totally positive and NO NEGATIVE THOUGHTS OR MESSAGES. Self-talk is powerful. Be very careful with it.

Did I say laugh? Laugh. Often. Laughter is indeed the best medicine. Just look around you. Isn’t it a beautiful world? Sunrises, sunsets, phlox and magnolias. The song of the Red Cardinal. The Chirrr of the Black-capped Chickadee. Sparrows fighting, rolling in the dust. Rowdy Starlings taking full advantage of the bird bath. The fox, the bear with her cubs, the coyote lurking in the shadows. The Red Tailed Hawk and the Peregrine Falcon soaring on thermals, searching for prey. Canadian geese, South American hummingbirds, salmon going to their places of birth to die – all timeless cycles of an earth that endures, even us, humans. Are these not enough to make us happy?

6. Finally, the bonus point. Yeah! I know I said it was five points. So, this one is free. Enjoy yourself. Spend your money. Don’t travel Economy. You deserve to travel Business. Take porters. Don’t try to carry your own luggage. It is better for your image and your back. Empty your bucket. Live your list. Do all the things that you had been saving to do when you had some free time. Now you do. Go see places. Take cruises. Spend half a day sitting in front of the Mona Lisa. Or whatever is your thing. I love wildlife, so I spend time in the bush, watching them doing their thing.

Gratitude: Should I have said that first? Or is this the best place for it? An attitude of gratitude is the secret of ensuring that our old age is not lonely. I thank Allah for all that He gave me. Life, health, wealth, difficulties we learnt from, pains that helped us to appreciate the joys of life. For without darkness, light is not as enjoyable. For meetings and partings. For ease and hardship, for dreams achieved and dreams that remain dreams. For prayers accepted as we asked and for those accepted in other ways. Thank those through whom all this came to us. People we know and those we don’t. The committed partner, child, student, companion, or caretaker. And the incidental porter, attender, mail carrier, garbage truck driver, neighbor who brings in your trash bin if you forget, the immigration officer who says, “Welcome home”. Thank everyone. Say ‘Thank you very much’, from your heart. They can tell. Ask about their family. The next time, ask about whoever they mentioned, by name. Give a little gift on some occasion. A Thank You card. Just a smile and wave. But show that you see them, recognize them and appreciate them.

In South Africa they greet you with “Sawubona”. That is a Zulu greeting that translates to “I see you”. It’s more than just a polite salutation; it conveys recognition of a person’s worth and dignity, acknowledging their existence and experiences. The response is “Sikhona,” which means “I am here” or “I exist”, as if to say, ‘I exist because you see me.’ It is a beautiful way of showing respect for the person you are meeting. Much to learn from every culture, even your own.

Be polite. Especially to those who are not polite to you. It will make them think twice and mend their ways or it will infuriate them. Both are good outcomes. Smile. Never greet anyone sitting down. If someone comes to greet you, stand up. You don’t even know the leverage of that. Make people important because they are. Especially children. Their smiles are your payment and there’s nothing more precious. Do these things and see how people will cluster around you.

Now if you read all this, all power to you. Please share your thoughts, experiences and comments on the blog. Life doesn’t begin at 40 or 50 or 70. Life begins when you decide to begin living thoughtfully. Welcome to the Best Lap Club.