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  #1   ^
Old Wed, Jan-15-14, 03:12
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
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Default Fitter, happier, better sex: so this is what it’s like to be 70

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From The Times
London, UK
15 January, 2014

Fitter, happier, better sex: so this is what it’s like to be 70

Who knew old age would be this much fun? Angela Neustatter on doing Pilates, taking on her demons and dressing to kill


A couple of months before my 70th birthday a younger friend rolled her eyes at me and murmured: “I wonder what it’s like being a septuagenarian?”

Not half as much as I was wondering. Would the person I had enjoyed being through my sixties morph overnight into a Giles Grandma: rumpled, crumpled, a mass of aches and pains, shaking an umbrella at the world’s follies, moaning about feeling invisible, an offence to the eyes of a world that adores youth? A daft idea, but given the white noise of age — prejudice and grim premonitions of disintegration of mind and body that become ever more insistent — perhaps unsurprising.

Not that the self-delusion and hyperbole of those claiming that they are “25 on the inside” and “as young as you feel” is preferable. Nor is the age-defying fashion for saying that 50 is the new 30, 60 the new 40 and so on. Better by far the response of the American writer and feminist Gloria Steinem to the TV interviewer who told her that she didn’t look 50: “This is what 50 looks like.”

I crossed the Rubicon in September so I’m still too much of a babe in the pack to know what living through the seventies will be like, but the thing that struck me and inspired my new book The Year I Turn . . . A Quirky A-Z of Ageing is that there can be an upside to getting older. (But a caveat: this presupposes you do not have a serious illness or a loved one who does and that you do not live in wretched poverty or are isolated and depressed — issues that clearly colour everything and deserve compassion.)

Many of us belong to a generation that has been bombarded with information on keeping the body fit with diet and exercise. In my book, in a section on health, I pull together some recent cutting-edge research. Neuroscience is discovering that even the timeworn brain may be able to rejuvenate itself. Therapy and counselling, which have positively romped out of the closet in the past half-century, have helped many of us golden oldies equip ourselves with skills for dealing with life in a way that was unfathomable earlier.

I have been a journalist for more than 40 years. I was a fashion editor and women’s page editor, covered fashion in Hong Kong and have written ten non-fiction books on themes as diverse as feminism, the meaning of home and a study of children in prison. A lovely career — and yet somehow I was always in thrall to destructive demons.

Finally, I have learnt to take on my inner dominatrix who for years drove me to feel I was never successful enough, a nobody if I didn’t impress the right people and was left reeling at rejection. Now that space, vacated by inner turmoil, is filled with a sense of contentment in a perfectly mundane life. I have etched on to my psyche the wisdom of Mark Twain who talked of mind over matter as the business of life: “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

My husband Olly and I, realising that we rose each morning moaning about aches and stiffness, took up Pilates then yoga in the early 2000s, adding tango a couple of years ago. It is a bit of a thrill these days to lift hips high and hold a leg stand, jump into a wide-stretched warrior pose and whirl into a hero dance step.

As a result my body is fitter and suppler than for many decades — and I like it better. So I see no reason to banish leopard-print leggings, short skirts with high boots and skimpy little cardigans from my wardrobe. As we age it is suggested that the greatest sartorial sin we can commit is to dress inappropriately. So what a delight was Channel 4’s programme Fabulous Fashionistas with six women all in their seventies and eighties dressed in flamboyant, alluring, vivid clothes in glorious defiance of strictures about what “should” be done. Clearly they felt, as I do, that if people don’t like the way we desport ourselves they needn’t look.

Then there is sex. You won’t find Olly and me swinging from a chandelier in flagrante, but there’s still some frisky entertainment to be had beneath the duvet. Indeed our sex life has spruced up since the days when the kids and work demanded every ounce of energy or we were battling with those mid-life “is this it?” questions.

Nor are we alone. Statistics show that far from all passion being spent, sex continues to be a cherished part of a good percentage of relationships into the latest life. Although I wonder how many of us would match the women of Okinawa in Japan who tend to live into their hundreds and frequently die just after making love.

And then there is grandparenthood. Becoming a grandmother three years ago was a glorious shock to the system. I had not expected to fall in love with my granddaughter so utterly — or to have such fun with a three-year-old. For me it has made sense of ageing, given me a place in the world that only an elder can take.

I can understand that it would be an altogether tougher situation if, as is the case for so many of today’s grandparents, I was needed to do full-time childcare — because another of the joys of this life stage is having time for me. I can make a stained-glass window, go to the theatre, embark on writing a book (as I am) with my younger son and so on — and on.

Of course, ageing is also about having to recognise that we are on the last sprint, which can certainly be hard to deal with. (I was encouraged, though, to hear David Cutler at Harvard University tell how these days poor health is very often compressed to the couple of years at the very end of life.)

There is no upside to having to cope with the pain of losing beloved family members and friends. My mother died when I was 25 and she 50, and my midlife years were spent imagining that I would get a tumour at the age at which she died. When it didn’t happen I felt free to anticipate older age with equanimity and was able to put her memory to rest. But then a dear friend, Pauline, died unexpectedly ten years ago and gone were the plans we had made to do so much “when we had time”. It brought sharply into focus the importance of making time for friends whose love and support are so important in later life.

I longed during my youthful decades to have “attitude”, with a style and persona, to glimmer like a fluorescent pen sketch — but it is a tragedy of youth that many of us have a self-image writ large in mouse grey. So how refreshing it is to have reached an age where I care less and dare more. Where I regard it as a compliment when my sons suggest I should be less exhibitionist or, as happened recently, an acquaintance asks a friend if it is really suitable for me to be wearing a veneered-on scarlet dress at a party. If I can’t stop being inhibited by others’ inhibitions now, then when can I?


What I’d tell my younger self

1. Refuse to give house room to regrets, recriminations and disappointments at dreams not achieved. They are the worst of demons to take into maturity. John Barrymore said, wisely, “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”

2. Exercise not only looks after our bodies but also our brains by boosting the blood flow to them and research shows it produces a protein that keeps neurons from dying. There is evidence that even an elderly brain may be rejuvenated by mental and physical exercise. So develop a regime that you enjoy and which will suit you in later years.

3. Build a dossier of things you dream of doing but don’t have time for if your life is filled with building a career and setting up home and you are longing for a bit of me-time. You can refer to it when children leave home and you reach retirement and suddenly no time can look like a scary amount of empty time and set about making some of the dreams happen.

4. Learn to look at the things that upset you and send you into a tailspin and work on cutting into this emotionally exhausting pattern. If you are trying to control a situation or a person’s behaviour, ask yourself why it matters so much to you — can you step back and not be involved? As we get older negative emotion can make us very unhappy.

5. Be a good and reliable friend to those who are important to you because, whether you have a partner or not, good friends are the greatest source of pleasure and support in later years and you can laugh together at the travails of youth.

6. Make peace if you have rifts in the family. One of the greatest joys of ageing can be involvement with grandchildren. Increasingly, families are finding enough pleasure in closeness to set up extended families where three or even four generations share daily life.

7. Take time to find inspirational examples of elders who can be found crossing deserts and climbing mountains, writing books, creating pictures and making or performing in films that win them recognition. Others belong to choirs and travel clubs, study for degrees, take on children in need, get enormous pleasure from extended family or become models, like 85-year-old Daphne Selfe.

8. Nail to the wall of your psyche the result of a study of 72 nations that found that, universally, people talked of feeling happier than they did in younger years because they are better at controlling emotions, less prone to anger and able to ignore it if people are disparaging about them.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article3975176.ece
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  #2   ^
Old Thu, Jan-16-14, 21:07
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JAnn JAnn is offline
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Thank you for posting this. I am fast sliding into 70 and wondering what I will be like. I had dreamed of old age with my sister and I moving in together, and being two eccentric old ladies that would set the town on it's ear, but my sister is very ill and probably won't be there.

My motto has always been "I can't do it any younger, why not now." I guess I need to put more effort in getting to Pilates class!
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Old Tue, May-06-14, 08:13
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Little Me Little Me is offline
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What a beautiful post; I'm so glad I saw it. Thank you.

Little Me
Age 64
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