Ode to Ageing

Posted 29 September 2019, by Daria Belostotckaia

It takes a lifetime to learn how to live. While figuring out what we can blame on our genetics, and the power of learning, hopefully, with each year we learn how to cope better. With our feelings, with the different ways of expressing our emotions, prioritisation, compassion, accepting randomness, and coming to terms with responsibility. Life is a messy journey.  It is so easy to get confused. Luckily for us, we’ve got the greatest benefit of all – we’ve got time. 

Time to figure it all out. To learn what we love, what we want and what we don’t want. To learn who we are and who we want to be. To become better, kinder, to learn that one doesn’t lose when sharing their feelings. To appreciate the value of silence. To be good at all that, and to be lost yet again. 

If I look at my life and count all my friends, the largest group would still be older people. 

I was lucky. 

I was surrounded by people who had time for me. 

The precious lesson they gave me very early on was all about time – how not to rush it. How, suddenly, there is no more of it. They showed me that loss is part of life, that life goes on anyway, and that people you loved become stories. 

Stories you tell. 

They showed me that there is always time to sit and read a book together.

They were curious about my hobbies and interested in me. There is no greater gift you can give a child than letting them know that they are interesting for what they are. I felt like that since I was 6.

Life has changed since. 

So many times. 

I have more stories to tell. 

There will be another one, the great love story of my childhood and of my life. It’s not the time for it yet, but it will be.

One day. 

And I know that on that day I’ll get older within a minute. 

And the world won’t stop turning.

I’ve been studying ageing for the last 10 years. I thought if I was connected to something so much, I should know everything about it. I learned that people become happier with age. (You could read about it here and here). I learned that older people’s brains start to prefer positive information to negative, as they prioritise increasingly-limited cognitive resources. I learned that people and good relationships are what counts in the end. I learned that when people forget so much that the world becomes an unfamiliar, confusing place, they become aggressive, not because they are bad people but because they are afraid. I learned that when I notice this subtle absence in their eyes, a specific lip movement, it’s a sign that they are not fast enough to participate in the conversation the way they did before. I learned that it could be a sign of cognitive impairment. I learned that older people can be rigid and reluctant to learn but I also learned that they crave new knowledge and that their brain is exceptionally plastic in the world with fewer stereotypes and less stigma.

It’s hard to lose the world we are used to, the one where we learned how to live and how to love. It’s hard to lose it because the world is simply faster than you. It will always be. And one day we all be too late, too slow and too old.

My grandpa and I message each other throughout the day. 

Every day. 

He loves the internet, geography and he really – as no one else – loves me. 

His age is his wealth but it’s mine too. 

His age and all that time he had. 

Turned out, it was a gift to me. 

The best one a six-year-old could get.