When Does Old Age Begin Essay

Humans as well as other living things have life cycles. Many to which are born from mothers, grow up and then go off to live on their own. However, what happens to people when they grow old? Several of us seem to think it’s when a person’s hair turns gray and when he or she becomes wrinkly. The article When Does Old Age Begin?, asserts, “Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, life spans started steadily rising, from 45.7 years to 88 years, now,” (Fisher). If looked at old age in the view of lifespan, in the twentieth century the highest age for people to survive was about the age of eighty-eight years, as Fisher claims. Even though people may be able to live to be close to ninety, the poem Ulysses, narrated by the heroic Ulysses himself,

He has realized that he is an old man, but does not want to stop his life just because of his age. Furthermore, Ulysses proclaims, “I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees,” (page 971, lines 6-7). The hero does not want to quit his journeys because he is old. Moreover, he uses a metaphor, explaining how he will “drink life to the lees.” Lees was a chunky mud that was in beer, in which men drank in bowls. The lees would sink to the bottom of the bowl, and was the strongest part of the beer. Ulysses wants to encounter life all the way to death, just as a person would drink the beer all the way to the lees. To extend further on the idea of living life to the fullest, the short article, 3 Tips for Living Life to the Fullest Each Day, elaborates, “It doesn 't have to be some extra ordinary feat or monumental achievement that defines living life to fullest,” (Glaeser). Even the smallest achievements in life can satisfy the average person, but to exceed those achievements long after they have been passed is extraordinary. Ulysses didn’t want to be the average person or hero, he wanted to live his life to the fullest even when knowing his time was almost