How old is too old?

Whatever the retirement age is in your country.
Think of all the money that could be saved!

In my volunteer work, I have a colleague who is 94.
He’s relatively healthy, comes to the job on his bicycle.
If I see him, as well as my parents, who are around 80, I’d sign for that today.
80, 85, 90ish, sounds pretty nice.

On the other hand, if my quality of live diminishes steeply at, say, 60, I’m not sure if I would still like to get to 80 or 90.

When I was in my twenties I had this feeling that I would live to 94, but that feeling has lost some of its shine (for a short while I even had the feeling, for real, that I was immortal..).

I do still think that I’m only halfway, but to be honest, I think that for over a decade already.
I just adjust my parameters every time.

Dunno. I haven’t lived long enough to say that. And every decade of my life has been better than the one before it. I guess when I finally cross triple digits I may revisit this question.

@rebbel I like your answer and align with that as well. As long as I can get myself out of bed and log on here on my own I will be up for another day.

@Vignette I set my bar a little lower. If I can get up and use the bathroom without assistance it is a good day. And since that has been most days of my life it seems like an achievable goal.

Considering my medical condition aged me twenty years in four actual years, I can state with full confidence that age has nothing to do with it at all. Time is a concept only, not a dimension, or a power. It has use only in mapping predictable physical events, and past events in relation to the measurements as we perceive them.
I have to laugh that Stephen Hawking’s initial chosen field of study was no more than a glorified yard stick. However, to his credit, he ditched that early on.

When I can no longer derive any joy from living.

When I’m laying in bed in the nursing home, not able to get up to participate in activities or go to the bathroom on my own, then I will say enough is enough.

It’s one of those questions where the answer is “you’ll know it when you see it”

I can’t put a number on it. It has more to do with being physically and mentally well. I guess if I were over 80 and things started to go, I would be more ready to call it quits faster than if I were 60 and things in my body and mind began to break down.

It’s too complicated to give a simple answer.

For men, 76.6 years is old enough, 81.6 for women. You’re too old if you have to go into a nursing home.

When it’s time @kritiper we’ll put you on an iceberg and give ya a push.

@Vignette How old is too old?

When enough is too much.

@kritiper Where I live I know two women in their early 90’s still getting out. One goes dancing almost every day. The other still drives (I’m not sure that’s a good idea, but she does) and I see her playing chair volleyball, coloring, and the other day she was in the grocery store and one item was a gallon of milk. She lifted the gallon like it was nothing. Most people who play the chair volleyball can walk by the way, one of my friends does it after a regular zumba class.

Plenty of men and women in their 80’s still swinging a golf club, and I see them at the discussion groups I go to.

@JLeslie So true, so true…
But 50% of all people die before the ages I mentioned.

@Vignette Why bother? How old I am when I kick the bucket is no skin off your nose…
Or is it??? Why??

@kritiper If you’re dead you’re dead. Nothing we can do about that.

@JLeslie That goes without saying. And median ages for death are what they are.
You can’t dance (or play golf, or whatever) when you’re dead. That goes for everyone, you included.
Why should I get sent away on an iceberg when it’s my time? You can do something about that unless you want a spot on the iceberg as well…

Wait, what’s on this iceberg?

Yeah @kritiper Why bother? Why answer the question??

@JLeslie Eskimo’s before modern time had to deal with the elderly and infirm and the put them on an iceberg and give them a shove out to sea was a romanticized version of senilicide written a fiction novel in the 50’s.

Dear God.

@JLeslie Honest to God that was my mom’s instructions for us to do for her when she became infirm. I had to remind her she lived in Florida.

Well, you got alligators.