Why I enjoy being old

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 10

Why I enjoy being old

By

GORDON WILLS JOHNSON

One of our peculiarities in New Zealand is that we value old age in cars, books, and furniture, but only vej-y rarely in people. Yet, when you look at this logically, it doesn’t make much sense: a 60-year-old car has no intelligence to pass on, no wide and long experience it can share, no contribution it can make to coming generations. Its only real qualification is that it’s so old that most of its contemporaries are dead and gone. It costs a, lot of money, but only because it is rare. Men or women with 60, 70, or more years of life behind them usually have two qualities that are too often not understood by younger people. They have ail those years of experience that most are willing to share; and, most of us have a lot more years of active and enjoyable living ahead of us than most young people imagine. There is a tendency to look on happy, busy, older people as exceptions to some rule of life; as though they were, in some way, lucky and unusual. You will find, however — if you take the trouble to check — that most old people become what they have been training themselves to become throughout their lives.

The complainers become worse complainers; the bigots become worse bigots; the loafers become full-time loafers; the great majority of us can become even happier and often even busier than we were during our working lives.

Without the need to punch a time clock, and with the free choice to do anything they like, many retired people will tell you their days are now so busy they can’t imagine where they used to find the time to go to work — and these are the majority. These are the people we call on for unpaid voluntary community work, for extra help with younger families. They are the people who, often for the first time in their lives, find themselves sufficiently free from responsibilities to be able to take up new interests, learn

new skills, and to enjoy to the full this third section of their lives. This is life’s natural third section. The first is when we are children, often frustrated by the fact that older people order our lives; the second is when, as adults, we have responsibilities ordering our lives; and the third is when, at last free, only our own mental attitudes — and, too often, the attitudes of younger '' people towards us — can hinder our enjoyment of our autumn years. The real problem is not the attitude of many younger people — but that too many older ones believe they are right. They swallow whole the propaganda that says once you’re past 60, you’re old, useless, and just waiting around to die. Rot! So, we can’t run a mile in four minutes; but most of us never could. So, we can’t lift locomotives, nor clear tall buildings at a single bound — but, at our age, who wants to? We’ve done all those things — nearly — when we were younger. Your tastes change as your mind and body age. Change doesn’t necessarily mean for worse — any more than we see all changes for the better. It just means what is says: change.

It’s that word that comes before progress — remember? Deterioration is another matter entirely; most younger people can’t even spell it, anyway. We have to have young people, to keep the race going. But we don’t have to accept their inexperienced, callow evaluations.

Most of us are very happy to be old. It’s restful, slightly irresponsible, holi-day-ish, and — providing we still have our heallth, or most of it — jolly good fun.

Anyone who doubts this might care to recall a story about the late Maurice Chevalier, then 84, who was asked by the mayor of a French town he was visiting: "Tell me, M’sieur Chevalier, how does it feel to be old?” The entertainer reflected a moment. "Not at all bad,” he replied, "when you consider the alternative.”