The John Griff Column: Don't point the finger - change your attitude

We have been entertained by hour after hour of films and movies dedicated to it and with a variety of angles and opinions contained within them about it. Some have been comedies, others have been romances, others have been deeper, darker. And, of course, our own global communities have different attitudes towards dealing with it. Some fear it – some embrace it wholeheartedly and work with it. And some have made a fortune through manipulating our appreciation – or otherwise – of it.

I mean age.

I think I first became aware of ageing – as opposed to growing up – in my early to mid-teens. I had an older father than most – he was fifty when I came along and I slowly became aware that his life path was nothing like that of my contemporaries. He saw war service before many of the fathers of my friends had been born. And he retired while I was still in those mid teems at school. I had no criticism of this – it was simply the way things went for him, my family and me. I also meant that at a relatively young age I lost my father. For a time I was positively angry about this – I had seen it coming as soon as I had recognised that my father was older than most, and so it turned out to be. But at the same time, I recall being enriched with his wisdom, experience – and values - at a much younger age than might have otherwise been the case. Outside our family I think my father’s age was a point of conversation but I never felt weighed down by it – if anything I felt better equipped for life by it.

I am now quite a few years beyond the point at which my father became a father himself. And society has continued its headlong rush (or tumble?) towards the obsession for frantically grasping at youth and vitality. Wherever one goes there is communication that ageing – or the acceptance of it - is something to avoid at every turn. I recall that as a teenager, age was always a barrier and I had to have more of it before I could actually do the things I wanted to do, like drive, without the cost of insurance making it an economic impossibility. Then, I couldn’t wait to be older – now I’m being encouraged to put it off at every turn – that I have the freedom to make more of my life and in perpetuity.

What rubbish.

If the true guarantees are death and taxes, then neither guarantees the state with which we approach, encounter and deal with them. It is entirely true that we have made advances in technology which allow us – if we have the money – to savour a better quality of life. It is also true that life expectancy has continued to lengthen. My father died at the age of 84 – a life that was lived out actively until the end, albeit that I could see his slowing down and decline. I see it in others and have witnessed it in the parents of my contemporaries. Now, in my late fifties I can feel the march of time in myself. Certain things are being forced upon me – I ache more in the mornings than I used to and my optician says I need new lenses again. My body is telling me that I’m into the last third of my life even if my brain is being told from outside that there’s an abundance of life left to be lived – old dog or no old dog. The thing is, I think both body and brain are correct – so there’s probably an internal argument coming. If the body gives up before the brain does, it’ll be down to technology to support my existence. But should I fight, or go quietly, having had ‘my’ time?

This is the conundrum. I recall as an adult, watching an 8-year old Sir Lewis Hamilton beating the rest of the field in a radio-controlled model car race around the Blue Peter garden on tv. But now, ‘they’ are commenting about him being one of the oldest Formula 1 drivers on the track. Do they mean he is incapable of driving competitively with the rest of the field, that he is a danger to others because of the effects of age on his body and mental acuity? At the age of 37 he might statistically be one of the older drivers, but I’d argue that his mental maturity behind the wheel as well as his undoubted physical fitness is what makes him the record-breaking global sporting star that he is. Age isn’t the impediment here – the attitude of others certainly is.

A couple of weeks ago and not for the first time I interviewed Dr Sarah Jarvis for the radio – during our conversation she let it slip that she was about to reach a milestone birthday. Like many millions of people in the past few years I’ve seen her from the perspective of her laptop computer camera in her surgery and thought she meant she was about to reach 50. Instead, I soon came to understand that she meant it was her 60th which was approaching. She mentioned that she had been told that 60 is now the 40 where we, as adults, mature to our peaks. 60? Really? Who are we trying to kid?! If 60 truly is the new 40 then the journey to dotage on the other side of it is going to be truly rapid, particularly with the developing understanding that we have over physical decrepitude and mental decline. We might be living longer – but how well are we managing that? There, I suggest, is the question for politicians, the medical community and others to wrestle with for the foreseeable future.

And what of the future? As one now in his upper fifties I assure you that my ability to contribute to society is as good as it has ever been. Early in my working life I was taught never to call someone ‘old’ even if I thought that they were – because if I did, they would prove me wrong. Society has a merciless trait – pointing the finger and saying that as older members of society we should clear out and make space for the young. It doesn’t have to be that way, shouldn’t be that way and robs society of wisdom and the ability to advance itself if it is allowed to be that way. And let nobody overlook the power of the so-called grey pound either. Or the so-called grey vote.

Is 60 the new 40? When will 70 and then 80 become the new 40? Time will tell. Ageing – or at least changing is perhaps somethin