A Betty White Story

What Would Betty Say?

I have a Betty White story. I never met her while she was alive, but I always admired her talent and spunk. That's a nod to Lou Grant's perfect line,

"I hate spunk."

In January, I was thinking about my mother who would have been one hundred years old this year. Maybe that's what got me thinking about Betty, because she hadn't made it to one hundred either. I was wondering what my mother, Barbara was doing in heaven, so I decided to pay an imaginary visit to the pearly gates.

I love acting, and imaginary visits to people and places help me create characters. I use these visits to try to improve my own character too. I closed my eyes and imagined walking up to the gates of heaven, and who should show up but Betty White? (I'm sure Barbara was busy elsewhere in Elysium, and she's probably with me most of the time anyway.)

Betty looked me straight in the eye and said,

"You have one job!"

I knew immediately what job she was reminding me of. The job is love. That subject is too vast for me to even touch in this blog post, and I already knew the specific action she was referring to.

You see, I asked for guidance more than a year ago about what I could do to stay in service over sixty. I want to be useful in the third act of my life, and singing, dancing, and playing music can feel frivilous sometimes.

Here is the answer I got when I asked what I should do:

"Make your own music, and dance to it."

The instruction was so clear, and it contained everything I asked for. I've been singing and dancing for decades, but the step I'm being challenged to take is to make music of my own. This means putting in the effort to become and better musician, and learning the technology to record and share it.

Beyond that, the guidance to dance to it calls for physical commitment. I've intended to dance forever ever since I took my first ballet class at age nineteen. That's a late start for an aspiring dancer, and I was so far behind everyone else in that class I didn't know if there was any hope of my ever getting cast. Still, the love of dance took me by heart and it hasn't ever let me go.

How To Keep Dancing Over 60?

Fortunately, I've never stopped dancing except for the eight weeks I spent in a cast after breaking my foot at age 39. (That's a story for another post.)

The key is to combine resistance, interval, and dance training to maintain strength, balance, and flexibility. At 62, I can no longer get away with "Vanity Training," which calls for highly restricting energy input and accelerating output at the same time. This is what is known as cutting and shredding in the quest for an aspirational body.

It's fine. I have a long timeline. Thirty years sounds good to me. I think I'll seek advice from Rita Moreno. It's fabulous that she's still here to inspire us all.

Just Keep Dancing Like Rita!