The Advantage of Ageing

By Anna Cook−

Where do I start? There are so many advantages to ageing!

To distil this down to the most fundamental instead of having an enormous list, I asked my best and oldest friends, Julie and Rhonda, what it meant to them as well as my own opinion. The three of us are similar ages but have lived very diverse experiences and followed very different paths.

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  • We are more comfortable with ourselves both physically and mentally. This can have several benefits
    • We know and accept our body, our looks, our style – so for clothes, fashion, image we can branch out into something a little more personalised, show our own character, develop our tastes in a particular direction, using different colours that go with the changes in our skin and hair – it can be very liberating!
    • Mentally, we can focus on what we really like doing, we can be more relaxed about our wishes and dreams, we can live more in the present (instead of the past or future), and really enjoy every moment of what we do as we do it.
  • We have more time for ourselves. Our children are grown up, left home or at least independent and doing most things for themselves. If they aren’t, maybe you should ask yourself if you are being overly involved and that giving them more freedom to take care of themselves would better help them for later life. So with your extra time you have the luxury of really doing what you want, spending time on you and taking pleasure in every moment of it – remember all those things you have been putting to one side for all these years? Well dust them off and go do them! No feeling guilty because you ‘should’ be doing something for somebody else – that time is past, now it’s your time to live.
  • We have already done our best with our children, we can enjoy the grandchildren without the responsibility of being ‘full time’. One of the greats! Having children again but part time, we can enjoy the good bits, help our own children at the same time – but still hand them back so we get all the nice bits and not the long, hard daily slog that comes with being a Mum. However adorable our children are, being a Mum is hard work, particularly if you have combined it with a career – so enjoy the lovely part time grandparenting duties, respect your children’s decisions for their children – in other words, don’t try and tell them how they should be doing it – just follow their wishes and enjoy, make it an oasis of happiness, relaxation and pleasure for you, your children and your grandchildren!
  • We’re not so bothered by other people’s opinions of us now and we can relax into experiencing new interests as we no longer have to ‘prove’ ourselves. Our own self-knowledge, values and beliefs are fairly well established now, without as much external influence/peer pressure. This gives us the confidence and curiosity to want to explore in new directions. This could be in any direction, a hobby like painting or theatre, a sport like running, dancing or tai chi, more education like learning a language, doing a degree. It could be something more spiritual like going on retreats, or travelling to interesting places. Maybe you have always dreamed of writing a book, helping in a charity/cause… Now is the time to allow your own interests to come to the fore, explore and develop!
  • We can sort out who we really want around us as opposed to when we are young having the ‘right’ people to ‘help’ us socially and work wise. This is something we can do with grace and tact. Often we are drawn into relationships not really of our choosing, whether in the workplace or through our family life. For example, when the children are at school we have to be involved with committees, groups etc for our children’s sake even if we really have nothing in common with the others, same for work… Sometimes we end up in contact with negative people which can drain our energy, or with people who have very different values and beliefs to us. You can gracefully retire from these interactions and spend more time with the people you really like, and of course, developing and expanding a positive and interesting circle to enjoy more quality time.

Best of all, we can enjoy our new knowledge, and relax into our beautiful and liberating ageing, with the wisdom acquired from all our previous enlightening and enriching experiences!

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The Advantage of Ageing
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