Book Club - Engaging with Ageing with Anne Ring

It’s time to rethink ageing.

Our bodies are a wonderful time machine, propelling our selves through our ages as we gather experiences, knowledge and wear and tear.

I am on a crusade to destigmatise the word 'old'.

I am on a crusade to destigmatise the word 'old'.

I am working against the power of commercial forces that benefit from the promotion of 'anti-ageing' by feeding off fears of ageing and the desire to look young, turn back the clock and remain ageless.

And I’m also waging war on the automatic assumption that staying young can be considered a compliment to we oldsters.  “It keeps them young.” No! We keep on enjoying life, making the most of it, and savouring the later stages as much as those that have gone before. Why equate all of that with youth, as if that is some sort of virtue?

I’m old and happy about it, so don’t dare call me young for my age

Reading about a remarkable woman who had recently died, I came across a description of her in old age as “a most youthful elderly person”. I am putting my obituary writers on notice: please do not use any such term to describe me.

So, not “young at heart”, not “80 years young”, or any other denial of my being happily old, and delighted to have lived and experienced so much while continuing to enjoy what I do. And let’s not confuse continuing to do what we like to do with “staying young” rather than what it actually is, which is the continuation into old age of who we are as individuals.