Inspirations & Connections | II. Age

In our never-ending nostalgic quest to relive the 'Golden Age’ (which never really existed), we realise that ultimately, we are here for a finite time. What does age really mean to us?

Community, and creating a sense of community, is so important to me, and to the world. In this series, taking a particular theme, I want to share with you some of the inspirations, connections and other communities which have enriched my life, in the hope that they may do the same for you too.

We live in a connected world where community is no longer merely centred on a particular geographical area. Communities can exist anywhere, even crossing oceans and timezones. Yet, I’m convinced that despite this, we crave deeper connections with others more than ever before. The connections and communities I find, continue to enrich and encircle my life, and I hope they might inspire you too.

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‘From age to age the same’

Whilst there is much value in the things which remain changeless, there are, of course, many things which do change. I’m older now than I was last year; indeed, I’m not necessarily the same person I was last year either. These things change. We age.

I expect that like me, when you were a child, everyone seemed old. My teachers at school, probably in their 30s, their 40s at most, seemed to be ‘ancient’, at least 60, and somehow relics from a time gone by. Our concept and understanding of age changes over time. All of the children I teach now were born after the year 2000, and indeed, no one under the age of 24 has any experience of the 20th century. When I was growing up, there were people alive whom we knew who had been born in the 19th century. Even to me now, that feels almost mind-blowing.

Agnes Dorothy French, pictured here in 1979, was born in 1895. She had been a great friend of my grandmother since they met at Bishop Otter College, Chichester, in the 1920s. We used to go and visit her at at her nursing home in Selsey, and I think I was slightly in awe of her great age, a relic of the Victorian Era. When she died in 1989, her obituary read:

‘Dorothy French, doyenne of salt marsh plant ecology, died at Selsey on October 23, aged 95 years…Dorothy French sat for many years on the Bench of Magistrates, as a Justice of the Peace; and she was keenly interested in the W.E.A. She was a qualified Red Cross nurse, and regularly worked at the first aid station opposite Bognor pier. In March 1910, when Dorothy was only 15 years old, the violent south-east storm broke through Pagham Harbour and flooded hundred of acres inland with salt water. It was this event that focussed Dorothy’s attention on the botanical changes in the harbour area, and sparked off her pioneering researches on salt marsh plant ecology, leading eventually to the publication of her monumental work “The Flora of Pagham Harbour”.’

She was, at least to us, very old, though even as her mobility, sight and hearing faded, she never lost her sense of fun, in the right company, of course.

As I get older, I find age a strange and unwieldy concept. What does age really mean?It’s a question no doubt pondered by our ancestors, many of whom expected to live far shorter lives than we might expect to now. ‘Age is only a number’ goes the saying, but age comes with baggage. Societal expectations of what we do, how we act, and how we feel at different ages remain undiminished. ‘Wisdom comes with age’ is embedded in our psyche, and how many of us have had instilled in us the seemingly undisputed fact that ‘life begins at forty’?

A few years ago I reached the stage where I had to admit that I no longer recognised the world I grew up in. Change has simply gone too far, too fast. We could see this as a negative, but perhaps there is some comfort in realising that every generation who came before, has undoubtedly felt the same. In our never-ending nostalgic quest to relive the ‘Golden Age’ (which never really existed), we realise that ultimately, we are here for a finite time, and time, and indeed age, challenges us to seek fulfilment and value from life at whatever stage we find ourselves on the journey.

‘It’s from the old, we travel to the new’

A line from a hymn which many of us sang with as sense of welcome familiarity at school. It’s a cliché, but age is eternally pulling us forward. I’ve always embraced a fairly circumspect view of life. I rarely dwell on the past because whilst we can learn from it, we cannot change it. We can only live in the here and now with an awareness and understanding of what came before. We can’t make decisions based on what we don’t yet know.

This is, of course, easier said than done. We find ourselves in a permanent state of flux as we seek to meet and embrace the challenges of age, and indeed, the age in which we live. We can choose to see ageing as a negative, drawing us ever onwards towards one of life’s few certainties. Perhaps this is a morbid topic for someone who has just turned 40 to be writing about. Does life begin at 40? In truth, life begins with us, with our relationships with those around us, and with the communities in which we live and move, both online and in person.

At the age of 40, I can’t claim to be any the wiser, but these thoughts spring to mind:

• Take time to be present in the here and now

• Life is not a race

• Allow yourself to grow as a person, not as society expects you should

• Embrace age as a journey

• You don’t know what’s around the next corner, and sometimes, that’s a good thing

• Be willing to part with those things which no longer serve you

I wonder what age means to you, whatever age you are?

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