Looking at the elderly members of society, I cannot help but to be impressed by their lifetime of experiences. They have seen and done things that we as a younger generation can only imagine. They have lived through ages of history that we read in books and watch in movies.

I admire older people for their experiences, but so often I hear people from our younger generation calling older people "adorable" or "cute." How insulting is that? They have lived for decades and now we bring them back to the status of a baby and call them adorable. It seems pretty condescending considering these are the people that have set up the world that we live in today. Their lives have not stopped once they were retired or stuck with the label of "old."

I know many people that are retired and they refuse to stop learning. I look up to these people because they took their newfound free time and turned it into something productive. They will not let themselves wither away by doing nothing. For example, I know someone that is retired and volunteers four days a week as well as entering road cycling events. I want to be like that when I am older. I want to be the person that refuses to let their brain and body stop working because my job stopped. As we reach old ages, our brain starts to change again, and it allows for us to learn things more easily like we did when were children. So many older people take classes and keep learning as they age because the learning never has to stop. They keep their brains agile, sometimes more than the younger generations do.

Plus, I know older people, like my grandparents, that do not let the party stop as they age. They keep moving and can out-party most young people. My grandparents can keep the party going throughout the night, especially my grandmother.

I love that no matter what they are told about how old people should act, they continue to be themselves. Other than looking older, the personalities of the older generation does not change much as they age. They stay the same person but with a change in appearance. Our generation should learn from our elder counterparts. Age really is just a number and life is about what we do with the time we are given. We could wallow in the idea of aging or we could try and look at the new time as a fresh beginning to learn and do new things. We should never sit and act as though our life is over, for one day it will be. Would you have rather sat and done nothing for years other than dwelling on past memories, or spent the last years of your life making new memories?