We are more than half way through the Ageing alphabet and I thought this would be a good time to reflect on these blogs and catch up on what I may be missing and, as always, comments will be welcome. A friend had a quick look at us the other day, read some of the titles and glanced at some of the content and said ’ it is very serious’. I take his point and sometimes have felt some of the things that I was writing were a bit grim. There are people I know who deny that they are getting older, and seem very happy about pretending it isn’t happening, whereas people like me perhaps watch too closely a process which they find irksome and mysterious. I have been trying to identify the ‘irks’ and end some of the mystery.
Older people often say that they still feel young and that’s fine – and no doubt true. Our personalities are formed in our first years and we remain in that context all our lives. One of the most painful things about age is that, as you live at the same dynamic as you have always done, you find that your reactions are much slower – so you drop things, knock things over and, moving quickly as you have always done, need to check your balance before you move on.
‘Slow down’ a bit is the advice we ought to take I suppose, but that would be like becoming someone else which is neither easy nor desirable. Its natural to get old but at the same time it’s against our nature!
We are all very different but have many things in common. Ageing is one of them but again as we have said, people age at different levels. We need to laugh at some of the things we do or when we struggle to find words that refuse to obey our thoughts, especially when we come out with the wrong ones! Sometimes other people are laughing at us and we either grin and bear it or go into mental corners and sulk, and that’s no fun for anybody.
But I suppose I followed up the Euroresidentes team’s challenge to have a go at this because I thought the ageing process was in fact very serious indeed. An important matter, but not too heavy I hope.
Bryan
