I was talking to a friend just now, someone who is winding down her career and thinking about what comes next. We were talking about the people that we know who have retired. They seem to be divided into two distinct camps. One is the group who are even more engaged than before, whether it is travel or volunteering or engagement with family, their days are full and full by choice. The other is the group who have, somewhat by default, fallen into patterns of days that just seem to stretch on without much to fill them.

My friend said something that really struck me. She said, after a lifetime of working with older adults, that she believes the most important thing is to keep moving. Not just physically moving but mentally moving as well. Her comment was “I don’t want to get old. And I think that if you stop moving, that’s just what happens.”

She’s not talking about the date on the calendar. We all know that the days and months and years go by and that, if we are fortunate, we have the opportunity to grow chronologically older. What she is talking about, what I have seen as well, is that activity is, in so many ways, the key to wellbeing, Our bodies are meant to move, our minds are meant to be stimulated, our social needs are meant to be filled by and with connections.

Maintaining our level of function requires us to be proactive, to make choices that keep us moving forward. It is in our hands, as life changes, to remember how critical these choices are. A day sitting on the sofa watching movies may be a healthy way to relax and recharge. Days and weeks spent the same way? That could be a pattern that ultimately leads to a loss of energy, a loss of purpose and, as my friend so well said, getting older.

Inertia is the principle that tells us that an object at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force. I would contend that, when it comes to our health and aging, we have to use our internal force to prevent inertia in ourselves, we have to make that choice for ourselves, to fuel our beings and to continue to fill our full hearts.