Action Community Engagement (ACE) is the current research study in Oak Park and Forest Park, headed by Becca Levy, PhD, from Yale University. Levy wrote the book Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long And How Well You Live.
One of the local spinoff projects from the ACE study is a photo display that just opened this week at Wise Cup coffee on Lake Street in downtown Oak Park. Kudos to the owner of Wise Cup coffee. The display, titled “Aging Well,” comprises photos of older Oak Park residents, taken by participants in the research study. This display joins the ACE photo display currently in the windows of the OP-RF Township Senior Center on Oak Park Avenue and the ACE storefront art exhibit on Harrison Street.
Dr. Levy’s book highlights how people who have a positive outlook on aging, rather than fearing or denying it, live an average of 7½ years longer and are less likely to exhibit dementia. I just read about a 2025 study showing that people 62 and older who volunteer to assist others have blood cell markers showing slower biological aging. So you can lengthen your own life by improving someone else’s.
No matter how long we end up living, as we age our bodies change.
• Thirty-five years ago I had to get glasses. Today I can hardly read or see in the distance without my glasses.
• Twenty years ago I knew I needed hearing aids, but the audiologists kept telling me I didn’t. Finally, after the third audiometry test, I got my prescription.
• I didn’t realize it at the time, but in January 2020 I lost most of my sense of smell and taste. I suspect that loss was linked to the then-unfolding COVID virus.
• Over the past 10 years, my physical mobility has been changing. It’s hard for me to run these days.
Sight. Sound. Smell. Taste. Touch. All my senses. But to the outside world I don’t appear disabled.
There is a very close link between ageism and ableism. My friend Ashton just started using a cane to help her stay balanced. Right now, she can manage without it, but the cane makes her life easier and safer. She takes the cane with her and uses it everywhere.
Without my glasses and hearing aids, I would be in worse shape than Ashton without her cane. Yet the world sees her as disabled, while I get by making a fashion statement. Will a cane ever be just a fashion statement?
Why do people see someone using a cane as disabled but somebody wearing glasses is just somebody wearing glasses? Costco has an optical department. Maybe one day there will be a Costco cane department. It’s probably only a matter of time until canes become a mainstream multimillion-dollar a year industry.
