As a point of reference, I am 62 and I am not old.
My mother is 92 and she is old.
Oldbroad
So is your user name a bit tongue-in-cheek? 
“Old” is indeed a state of mind, but none of us gets to live forever. At 50 I definitely feel that there is more time behind me than ahead of me, but that’s not about to slow me down.
I think from my age on down it is sort of a latter stage, but this is not the end of the world. Just different.
When I was a teenager (freshman in college, I think, maybe sophomore), I had a strange conversation with my then-boyfriend’s father. At the time, I thought it was meant to comfort me because the boyfriend was acting strange – changed colleges, moved halfway across the country (less than a year later he moved all the way across the country) to go to a college that took no transfer credits, thereby wiping out his two or three years of progress toward his bachelors. I thought that his father was trying to convince me that the boy was just going through something normal.
His father told me that just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you stop searching, that there are always questions you need answered and you should never be afraid of asking those questions.
I broke up with the boyfriend not long after that (an inevitability), and later heard that the father had left the family to shack up with some woman and her kid, that he died, and that at his funeral, his “friends” referred to the woman’s kid as if he were the boyfriend’s dad’s kid, and acted as if his first family didn’t exist.
No point to this, I guess, except that he was right: I guess you never quit searching, and for some people the search is more destructive. And in retrospect, his talk with me wasn’t for his son’s benefit, but for his own.
Right. I am happier focusing on the question Why? than Where? or** When?** The question 'Why am I on this world? is much more interesting to me to worry about than ‘How will I earn a living?’ That’s what hitting middle age freed me up to do.
I don’t think that the apparent shifting of the “old” point is entirely a function of shifting perception. Medical advances really have made “old” much older than it used to be,
Twenty years ago, arthritis alone could–and not infrequently did–make a person an effective shut-in by their late 50s, early 60s–and it wan’t because they weren’t “young at heart”, it was because they had horrible crippling pain in their joints and few effective options for treatment. And arthritis is the least of it–it wasn’t that long ago that a single fall in your early 70s and a broken hip meant a nursing home for the rest of your life, or that if the knees you destroyed in a lifetime of physical labor gave out, you didn’t have any other options.
Then there is the cosmetic side: guess what–really good hair dyes, better quality make-up, face-lifts, fourty years of aerobics, all those things really do make a difference.
So when you remember your grandmother at 70 seeming much, much older than your mother now does at 70, she probably was.
Manda Jo has a good point - we’re all younger than our parents were at the same age. And they’re younger than their parents were at their age.
I believe it is also true that perspective has a lot to do with it. To a 16 year old, the 45 year old person seems positively ancient.
Caprese, my user name simply reflects chronology and my warped sense of humor. It also commemorates the day reality hit: One morning I got up to go to work, went into the bathroom and some old woman was staring back at me from the mirror. I still don’t know how she got in there.
If you’re healthy, and mentally active, the big problem with aging is when you get to the point where time and gravity begin taking their toll and the physical you no longer matches the mental you. That’s where I’m at. For the present I simply choose to ignore the physical me and go merrily about my life focusing on the mental me.
No, I think Manda Jo is wrong. I work in a hospital, and unsurprisingly meet lots and lots of older people. There’s people with crippling arthritis in their 80’s and 90’s whose perfectly healthy 60 and 70 year old children seem much, much older than them. The youngest acting old person I ever met was a 102 year old who didn’t let the fact that she couldn’t walk without assistance, could barely hear and could barely see get in the way of her enjoying life.
Old is a state of mind.
I turn 57 this year. I still have a mental image of myself as slightly less than half that age when I was dashing and handsome.
Unfortunately, the young ladies no longer cast glances of longing in my direction. More like casting glances accompanied by snickering and fingerpointing.
And every once in a while, that 26 year old idiot brain that lives in my skull will make a promise my 56 year old body will nearly kill itself trying to honor.
Funny how different people see the same situation completely different. I’m in the same situation you described (I’m 36, mom will be 71 soon). I USED to think 70 was old, till my mom hit it. My mom looks about 55, acts about 40. But I know she is 70, therefore I no longer see 70 as old.
I work in a nursing home, we have 60 year olds who look 95 and 102 year olds who look 60. As someone said above, it’s a state of mind. I look about 25 but some days I feel 21, others I feel 80.
I have decided that I will be old when I relieve myself in diapers instead of the commode.
65 feels like a person’s getting up there in the years to me. But when I look at my grandparents over that age who are still on the move, it doesn’t really seem that old.
Your not old until your pubes go gray.
Unclviny
Now I think about it, I guess I’m not worried about getting “old”, years from now. What I am worried about is that I may get “old” without having achieved the things I want to achieve, experienced my share of happiness, and attained that state of inner peace and good humour that you see in “young-at-heart” old people.
Sarah, the trick is learning to live in the moment. Learn to live with uncertainties. Take the time to watch and listen.
But at the same time, always have something that you are planning as a treat for yourself – something you are working toward day by day. It’s a sort of balancing act.
I felt old a different points in my life. Twenty-five was hard and for some reason, thirty-seven was too. But thirty and fifty were geat! So far my sixties have been very good.
You’re always the same age inside. Keep that in mind and don’t waste any time at all worrying about getting old. Just live more today.
I don’t expect to cease doing things when I’m old. I expect to do things, and enjoy doing things, as an old person.