When I tell people that I write about aging with strength, they often assume I mean physical strength and fitness. Everyone wants muscles, even after 50.

But muscles aren't enough. To have a long, vigorous and hopefully satisfying second half of life, we all need to build strength not just physically but in many other forms as well: emotional, nutritional, cognitive, spiritual (however you define that) and, not least, community.

These six elements form the harmony, or the team of stallions — pick whichever metaphor works for you — that can carry you into your ninth, tenth or eleventh decade with purpose, energy and, if you don't mind me using the J-word, joy. In other words, if you move your body, eat healthy, read books, maintain relationships, have a decent therapist and regularly check in with yourself, through meditation or communing with whatever god you believe in, you have what you need to age with maximum strength.

Or so I thought up until a couple months ago, when I discovered the missing piece to the aging puzzle: "Let it rip."

Let It Rip is an attitude, a mindset and a guiding principle about your second half or last quarter of your life. It requires seeing your remaining years as a huge opportunity instead of simply "Part Two" of the same play, following the same script. Let it rip means being willing to act on the ideas and interests that you can't stop thinking about.

For anyone over, say, 50, Let It Rip is the difference between aging with inertia — the tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion — and aging with action.

This is where I pause to say: If I sound like a self-help guru, I'm not. I'm a journalist and an explorer and, it's worth noting, an older single dad to a younger daughter. Thus, I come to you with this Let It Rip idea not from a fancy perch on high but, rather, as someone who's been brought low over the years and is now finding his way back to the surface.

For me, Let It Rip was an epiphany borne out of failure: failure of a marriage; failure to find inspiring work in a tech industry surprisingly marbled with mediocrity and comfortable with conformity; failure to find the financial stability I thought I'd earned. Oh, and also: failure to remain as strong, fit and athletic as I was at 32 or even 41. (When muscles were, indeed, enough.)

Here are a few different ways that I've put Let It Rip at the forefront of how I think about myself and my time on this Earth:

— After two years of thinking that aging with strength was something I should write about more often, I launched a Substack blog with that very name and began reporting on whatever interested me. That venture has grown from a couple hundred people to nearly 14,000 — because I decided to never mind the excuses and let it rip.

— After three years of not taking more than a modest one-week annual domestic vacation because my finances weren't exactly flush, I'm about to take my 82-year-old mom and 9-year-old daughter to Europe for 17 days. We're going to have an incredibly meaningful, three-generation travel experience that probably won't happen again — because I decided to stop saying "next year" and let it rip.

— After decades consuming essentially the same diet of frozen or processed meals with a couple weekly salads to make it all feel healthy, I started reading food labels, stopped buying ultra-processed crap and began thinking about eating in terms of grams of protein, good/bad fat and cooking plant-based meals. Last week, I fed a week's worth of data about my food intake into my favorite AI app and asked it how I can improve my daily nutrition habits — because it was time to get serious about nutrition, and let it rip.

— Two months ago, after a lifetime of believing it's always better to keep a low profile and not draw too much attention to myself, I started posting short, weekly home-workout videos on the internet — two-minute compound movements anyone can get up off the couch and do in street clothes — because I wasn't seeing anyone else my age do it better, so I let it rip.

— And finally, after spending years wishing the AARP would stop portraying aging as either an 80-year-old idiotically holding a skateboard or Mrs. Claus joyfully pruning roses in a garden, I decided to start a magazine that actually represents what being 50 or older is all about. It's called Geezer, this magazine, and will be full of stories about people who are aging, but not old, letting it rip.

To find out more about Paul Von Zielbauer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Jenny Hill at Unsplash