Some Thoughts on Whether Self-Labeling Can Support (or Harm) Our Mental and Physical Health

A little while ago someone I know proudly referred to themself as a geezer. I just as proudly pushed back and said, “Speak for yourself, I am not a geezer.” It was an awkward moment.

Inside, I instantly had tried on the word and rebelled against it. I wasn’t offended by it; I simply refuse to label myself that way for my own mental and physical health. I associate that word with sedentary people who are not proactive about their health and take a “whatever happens, happens” attitude toward their health when they can do so much to benefit themselves and their lives.

But it also got me thinking about labels, especially self-labels, and how they come to define us. My whole mission is focused on addressing the physical and mental dynamics of later life, and of redefining later life for myself as a wonderful age of growth and health, which explains why I rebel against that word and that kind of self-labeling.

This article is not about being older, it is about labeling yourself as older and what that can do to your outlook in this time of life. How do you see yourself in these later years? How do you label yourself? Even if you describe yourself as a geezer (or codger, old coot, or fossil) in a jokingly good-natured way, this self-labeling can negatively impact your motivation to stay healthy, live longer, and to be open to change. To me, geezerbrings a whole raft of associations with it. Mostly it’s being proud, usually with a dose of self-deprecation, of all the things that can go wrong with health in later life but not doing much, if anything, about them from a preventive standpoint.

From what I’ve seen, labeling yourself this way is usually accompanied by being inactive, happy to sit on the sofa and read, watch TV, or be online rather than move and be active. It is accepting that frailty and disfunction are part of the experience of getting older when simply moving more would avoid them. I wonder if this fatalism and self-rationalization that nothing can be done to prevent, or at least delay, the aging process—and age-related illness—is an excuse that many people use to hide their fear of changing their comfortable, sedentary habits. They wrap themselves in comfort and avoid the more challenging yet beneficial health practices that might actually get them to avoid illness and live longer, more fulfilling lives.

Perhaps most of all, to me at least, the label of geezer denotes someone who is stuck in their ways, won’t change, and has the capacity to practice being healthier but simply refuses to do it. They are set in their ways and their habits of comfort, whether it’s sitting on the sofa, lounging in an easy chair, or eating junk food because it’s handy and tastes good.  As I write about in another article, Sometimes You Can’t Do It Yourself, many times people are completely unaware of how unhealthy their routines are until they are encouraged, or forced, to change them.

I might just be venting here, and I might be projecting my own vehement disagreement to labeling myself that way. But I refuse to be resigned and buy in to the excuses for not being proactive about my health by saying, “There’s nothing I can do. I’m just getting old.” Yet ultimately the choice is up to each of us as to how we describe ourselves and live our lives. I choose health and activity. How about you?