Anyone else find that volunteering keeps you feeling younger in a way that's hard to explain?
I'm in my early 60s and have been volunteering with a local nonprofit for close to twelve years. Something I keep returning to is how much it seems to slow things down. Not time exactly, but that feeling of time slipping away that people talk about so much at this stage of life.
There's something about showing up to a town hall, or sitting with a group of neighbors working through a real problem together, that makes the week feel substantial. Like it actually happened, rather than blurring into the next one.
I read recently about research suggesting people born after 1965 are aging faster biologically, and it made me wonder whether the generation that grew up with more structured community involvement had something going for them beyond diet or exercise. Connection to place. A reason to be somewhere specific on a Tuesday evening.
I'm not making a grand claim here. It's just something I notice in myself and in the older volunteers I work alongside. They tend to be sharp and present in a way that genuinely strikes me.