The joys of being older

Minnie my neighbor and classmate at St. Scholastica’s College and her husband Jim introduced me to the busy life of retirees during a week stay in their lovely home in Templeton Drive, close to the Marina, Ventura County. Jim opted for early retirement from social work so he can focus on cultivating his talent in arts, joining the Arts and Crafts weekly class at the Ventura Senior Center. Judy Clements, their famous teacher, had taught Jim acrylic painting and paper mache art. Both Minnie and Jim were also taught creative writing by Janeva Scharf, making them write four compilations of their memoirs, a project of the adult education class “Preserving the Past.” I wish Filipinos seniors could have such vibrant experiences as Minnie and Jim had.

Time to write and paint and learn

Beyond our 50th birthday when retirement approaches are “Beautiful Years,” as Helen Huxley uses it as the title of her book, a compilation of 183 inspiring quotes from people who have grown more peaceful, stronger or simply happier as they have grown older. At 30, she launched “Yours,” a magazine for older people that is now the most widely read magazine in Britain.

Diane Ackerman, born 1939 said “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” Then says Carlotte Gray (1937), “Time to hear music. Time to write and paint and learn. Time to rethink your whole existence. Time to begin again.” Gloria Naylor, US novelist known for novels Linden Hills, and Mama Day is more emphatic, “And so what I’ve learned in the last 20 years is that I am the sole judge and jury about what my limits will be. And as I look toward the horizon of the next 20 years, it is no…no limit.”

Filled with a creative spirit, Beth Chato, a British garden designer and author states, “No one is too old if they have a passion to learn. To absorb new ideas is to live anew. To see the world and our gardens with fresh eyes.”

English aristocrat, letter writer and poet, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) who is remembered today for her letters from travels to the Ottoman Empire stated, “It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that nature has provided pleasures for every state.”

Meantime, the renowned English crime writer and poet Dorothy Sayers, best known for her novels set between World War I and World War II reminds us “Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.” American poet of our childhood, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) quotes, “For age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress. And as the evening twilight fades away, the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”

Grace and beauty

“Please don’t touch my wrinkles. It took me so long to earn them.” – Anna Magnani (1908-1973), an Italian stage and film actress who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in The Rose Tattoo. Mark Twain, an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher adds, “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” 

“You know, you can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.” – Anouk Amee, a French film actress known from the film La Dolce Vita (1960). “A beautiful lady is an accident of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art,” by Louise Nizer, a noted Jewish-American trial lawyer, who represented celebrities including Johnny Carson and Salvador Dali.  “A young face is still a blank face. An old face, with all its lines and wrinkles is a whole book.” – Anthony

Health and lifestyle

“Women in their fifties, once considered well past their prime, capable only of sitting by the fire knitting and waiting for news of their grandchildren, are now as beautiful and active as twenty-year-olds, as sexy as Jerry Hall.” from Daily Mail Oct. 3, 2002 by John Mortimer, an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.

“We do not stop playing because we are old; we have grown old because we have stopped playing.” – Author Unknown. Christopher Matthew, British writer and broadcaster who authored Now We are Sixty says, “None of us feel a nano second older than we did ten years ago. This is not some mental delusion borne of frail minds, but testimony to our active lifestyle. We go to the gym, we play tennis, run marathons. Some of us even launch into second marriages…”

Margaret E. Sangster (1838-1912), American author poet and editor thought alike, added, “People beyond threescore and ten often feel very young, for the soul does not age with the body, and while the house we live in falls apart, the soul is going on to immortal youth.” 

Love that lasts

“Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.” – Jeanne Moreau, a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director who won the Cannes Film Festival for the movie Seven Days… Seven Nights (1960).

Well-traveled Australian poet Pam Brown quotes “Passion has passed – but something better has taken its place. Companionship. Kindness. Friendship. A lasting love.” Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934), an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director asserts, “Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.”

Jean de la Fontaine, a French fable writer and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century says, “Friendship is the shadow at evening, it grows until the sun of life sets.” According to Edward Grieg (1843-1907), a well-known Norwegian leading Romantic Era composer and pianist, “It is great to have friends when one is young, but indeed it is still greater when one is getting old. When we are young, friends are like everything else, a matter of course. In the old days we know what it means to have them.” 

To carry the spirit of the child into old age

“There’s as old saying that life begins at 40. That’s silly. Life begins every morning when you wake up.” According to George Burns (1896-1996), the famous American comedian, actor, singer and writer. “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.” Says Aldous Huxley, English writer, novelist and philosopher. “To me fair friend, you never can be old. For as you were when first you eye I eyed, such seems your beauty still,” by the greatest writer in English language, William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

“I bless the rising sun each day… but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long happy life.” By Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), a Russian novelist, short story writer, journalist and philosopher known for his work, Crime and Punishment. Academy Award winning actress, singer, dancer and activist Shirley MacLaine quotes “I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself… and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.”

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