The new age

By JOAN LADY HARDY

I vividly recall when I was eighteen and in a grumpy mood my mother saying to me ”take a look at yourself in the mirror, and remember we all get the face we deserve by the time we turn fifty”.

Growing older is a mandatory process, but as someone wisely once remarked “there’s always something to be thankful for if you take the time to look for it…for example I’m sitting here thinking how nice it is that wrinkles don’t hurt”.

I consider myself lucky to be here, to have travelled the journey this far, in fact a friend said recently she wished she was 30 years younger to which I replied “but then you would have missed the 1960’s and 1970’s”!

Honestly, there are things I don’t like about getting older – gravity for example, and there’s not a lot to like about menopause (my husband can’t understand why, in these enlightened times, it isn’t called person-o-pause).

Some days I spend 10 minutes looking for my glasses but did I do that when I was 40? I have already forgotten.

I love making lists – post-its are my favourite thing and now I’ve discovered the post-it option on my iphone. It has changed my life – i just have to remember where I’ve put my phone!

We can now google everything and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I worry if I have a headache and google ‘headache’ it will say ‘see brain tumour’. Health certainly becomes a bigger issue as we get older.

It is so frustrating that we have become invisible to youth. Despite that, I have so much faith in what the younger generation can achieve. I was very moved a couple of years ago when my husband and I attended a presentation ceremony of the baccalaurete to final year secondary school students at the Adelaide Town Hall. What an impressive group of young people – the world now is their oyster.

I recall it was Eleanor Roosevelt who once said “beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art”. Now there’s a challenge.

My generation, the boomers, have always rewritten society’s rules and learning how we age well will be no exception. There are so many things still to do.

For me mastering my computer is one thing, as is learning another language (after two courses my Italian is basic). I must make time for tap-dancing or tango classes, read more, go to the theatre or ballet more often, and rent a house in Italy for a couple of months. I love it that I have the time to explore, to attend art classes, visit art galleries and enjoy a game of tennis.

Life is filled with such simple pleasures like a morning walk, coffee at a favourite café, and leasurely times – reading the newspapers and the enjoyment of lunch and a class of wine with my husband and friends. Such joys.

The wonderful actor and funnyman Danny Kay summed it up beautifully when he said “life is a big canvas – throw all the paint on it you can”.

JOAN HARDY

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