When in doubt, Ping Pong it out

Photo from The Toronto Star

Sports are a great way to stay active.  They are beneficial for your health both physically and mentally.  It’s a time where you can relieve stress from a hard day’s work, or just go out and have fun.  It’s a social environment filled with like-minded people to connect with.

You may be sitting there reading this thinking, “What’s your point?” or, “Yes, it was great when I was younger, but how does that apply to me now?”  Well, I’m here to answer that for you.

The Hot Docs festival in Toronto has recently brought in an abundance of new movies to showcase, one of which is Ping Pong­ – “a documentary about competitive players aged 80-plus battling it out on the international table tennis circuit,” writes The Toronto Star. 

It’s true.  I’m not making this up.  This inspiring movie follows the journey of eight different players, as they prepare for the World over 80s Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia. 

Hartford, the movie director, told the Star, “One of the things I’ve learned over the last three years spending time with them is they don’t think of themselves as old,” he said. “Their age doesn’t come into play with how they define themselves. It’s about attitude.”

And it is.  So, shine your shoes, blow the dust off the table (if you have one), grab a paddle and start practicing!  There is a world of opportunity out there, for any age; it’s all about finding what’s right for you.

Click below to watch a preview of the inspiring documentary: Ping Pong

Can technology help you on the road?

Let’s  be honest – navigating directions can get the best of any of us at one time, or another.  I don’t know a single soul who has ever claimed they have never had to pull a U-turn, pull over on the side of the road, or find an alternate route in order to reach their preferred destination.  Directions can be tricky and maps can sometimes feel like they are written in another language (… of course, if your map always feels like it was written in another language, you should make sure you’ve picked up the right one!).  Ultimately, many of us get lost. 

Driving is a luxury that allows many individuals to be independent.  As we age, our five senses (tasting, touching, hearing, smelling, seeing) tend to decline and as a result, can sometimes be the reason as to why an older adult can no longer drive themselves around town. 

But, in an article by The Globe and Mail, Phil Blythe, professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at New Castle University, says this is rarely the reason why seniors decide to stop driving.  In fact, “some older drivers give up on driving because they simply don’t feel comfortable behind the wheel.”

Blythe and a team of researchers in the United Kingdom are in the process of developing a new technology to study older drivers, and help keep them on the road longer. The team “outfitted an electric car with eye trackers, bio-monitors and tracking systems in order to help them understand the habits of older drivers. A driving simulator allows the research team to monitor eye movement, speed, reaction, lane position, braking, acceleration and driving efficiency,” The Globe reports.

“Most of us would expect older drivers always go slower than everyone else but surprisingly, we found that in 30 mph zones they struggled to keep at a constant speed and so were more likely to break the speed limit and be at risk of getting fined,” Amy Guo, the leading researcher, said in a press release.

With these findings, the team’s intentions are to look at the benefits of different systems that could help control speed as a way to prevent this issue from affecting the safety of older drivers.

So the question is: Would you feel safer with this innovative idea, or not?

The Paradox of Aging

Positivity goes a long way.  That’s the message Laura Carstensen delivers in her TedTalks video,  Older people are happier. Carstensen, a psychologist and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, has "extensively studied the effects on well being of extended lifetimes." In this video, she lightheartedly demonstrates through a series of studies that older people are happier people. 

How?

She discovered that with age, there are changes in our ability to monitor our own lifetimes. Younger people are trying to soak up all the information they can by taking risks, exploring, and meeting new people because everything is interesting and there’s always something more to see or do. But…

“As we age, our time horizons grow shorter, and our goals change,” Carstensen says in the video.  “When we recognize we don’t have all the time in the world we see our priorities most clearly.  We take less notice of trivial matters, and we savour life.  We’re more appreciative, more open to reconciliation.  We invest in more emotionally important parts of life and life gets better.  So we’re happier, day-to-day.”

The paradox of aging isn’t in what there is to dwell on, but in what there is to look forward to.  As the aging adult encounters each curve ball that continues to be thrown in this game called life, they can choose whether or not it is worth their time to dwell on the situation.  By focusing on what matters, life becomes more enticing, and the world continues to open up with opportunity.   

To watch the 12 minute video of Laura Carstensen's talk, click below.