accepting that I'm aging? how?
Recently, I was forced by physical challenges to retire when I was neither psychologically nor financially ready to do so.
I still have a fully working mind, I can handle all the requirements of daily life including cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc., at worst I sometimes need a cane for a long walk and if I forget where I put my reading glasses my arms are no longer long enough to let me read without them. However, my career has shifted to include specializations my body is no longer capable of, and my boss admitted to me off the record that at my age I am considered by upper management to be too old to train for another position, not in an economy when people in their 20s and 30s are desperate enough for a job that they willingly work for the equivalent of a pittance of what I had earned when I first entered my career.
So I retire, able to live but certainly not as well as I would have had this unwelcomed retirement come five years down the line, and my friends are all immensely supportive and try to comfort me with claims they are jealous, and I've got my health so who am I to complain?, except, well, I have also have reddit, so I will complain a little and then heed the collective wisdom of this subreddit.
How does a person make peace with and even welcome the marginalization from society of retirement? How does a person accept that there are no years left for the American tradition of denial in the face of biological inevitabilities? Most importantly, where can I find positive role models of aging men in books, movies, TV, streaming services, etc.?
I looked up once artist interpretations of senior citizen versions of traditional American pop culture heroes -- Superman, Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk, Ripley, Indiana Jones from before the latest movies, Mario, etc -- and all of them are depicted as decrepit and sad. One of them had Wonder Woman sitting there bleary-eyed, smoking a limp cigarette, surrounded by empty bottles and mess!
There's Peter Capaldi's Doctor, but even he seems attracted only to younger people. Aged Luke Skywalk existed only to prove young people should "forget the past: kill it if you have to!" which happened as the past galactic heroes died in ways brought on directly or indirectly by the actions of their unworthy replacements. Aged Indiana Jones mostly gets beaten up by the younger people who seem to resent that he hadn't died yet.
I looked online for representations of senior citizens, and most of what I found were clearly intended to guilt-trip young people into contacting dear old granddad before he dies dramatically in the final scene after saying, "Your single guilty visit to me after decades of neglect and isolation while I spent each one of those thousands of days staring emptily at my blank walls has made it all worth it, and so you can be proud of yourself!" and then leaves the proud teen or 20something hero everything in his will.
My family left this world younger than I am now, so I have no role models in my personal life on how to handle aging, and I was the oldest at my job so all I had was the experience of how to mentor younger men, though I doubt anything I have to teach applies in this benighted era now.
So, for the TL:DR crowd, "Accepting that I'm aging? How?"
Thank you.