I understand absolutely that as a commentator on the Maltese scene, I cannot expect to please everybody. I write – occasionally provocatively – about social issues, local and international political affairs and a range of other subjects. I do not expect readers to agree with me on every, or any aspect of what I write. Indeed, I would be failing in my role of stimulating debate and discussion in this extremely conservative country if they did.
Last week, the MEP, David Casa, hilariously even went on to accuse me of writing as I do to obtain the award of “a political appointment or… some national honour”. I must assume he says this because he finds my demolition of the Euro-parliamentary report he led impossible to comprehend. I can assure Casa that I have no plans to leave the cultural heritage project which has consumed the last 15 months of my time, and I shall go on with it for at least another 24.
I have also noticed that when other readers are incapable of articulating counterarguments to what I have written their default line of attack concentrates on my age – without adding one iota of intelligent comment to the debate.
Of these, one of my favourites is the lady who wrote a couple of years ago: “That prostrating oneself for a prolonged period at the age of 80 carries the risk of never being able to right oneself without permanent damage to one’s spine – a slipped disc, at least.”
Ageism – a bias against older people – is the last acceptable prejudice. Indeed, at a recent conference of the International Longevity Centre in London, it was noted by Andrew Scott, who leads it, that it was a unique phenomenon since “ageism is the only prejudice which means you will eventually be prejudiced against yourself”.
Like the racist and the sexist, the ageist rejects another on the basis of perceived difference. But ageism is singular because it is directed at a group that the ageist will one day join – if all goes well. The ageist thus “insults” his own future self.
A co-author of the best-selling book, The 100 Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, Scott believes the greatest challenge to our society is to rethink ageing. He urges that we should stop giving old age a set starting point. Instead, we should define it as the last 15 years of life.
What the young can’t grasp is that most older people don’t feel so different from their youthful selves
We should switch the focus from “mortality” (the age we die) to “morbidity” (the age when bits of our bodies start to fall apart – in parenthesis, all mine are still intact, I’m happy to say). If we can expand the time when we are useful citizens and reduce or compress the period when we require expensive hospital admissions and state funds, an “ageing population” will not be so economically onerous.
The upward trajectory of longevity – with a couple of years being added to the human lifespan in advanced economies every decade – is a testament to progress. The average lifespan grew more in the 20th century than in all previous millennia. By 2020, it is forecast there will be more people on earth over the age of 65 than under the age of five.
Yet it is rarely treated that way. The best plot lines in the lottery of life are seen as childhood, young love and the childbearing years. After that, the drama thins and mainly concerns loss: loss of mobility, loss of friends, livelihood, partner, hair (mine is thinning fast).
There is one excellent aspect of old age which is quite special to Malta. This is that a high proportion depend on family members, mainly grandparents, to look after their children when they are at work. Grandchildren are seen as the only perceived bonus – they certainly are.
That the old are dismissed as empty husks – or simply wrong because they are old, as some of my readers clearly believe – is not unique to our age. Romans were known to dispatch the enfeebled elderly. Nomadic tribes if forced to abandon camp in an emergency often left behind those too frail to walk. The old accepted it as the price of communal survival.
What Scott, an economist, and his co-author, a psychologist, propose is a radical re-evaluation from the three present stages of life of education, work and retirement. Instead, with our greater expanse of time, young people will have a longer period before they settle down. Education will be a lifelong process as, over decades, we constantly need to retrain and update skills. Retirement will not happen abruptly, but will have a long tail. We will need to earn for longer and develop the self-discipline to save more.
This will be the multi-phased living of the future. It is already happening. Confined to bed in his late 70s, Matisse fixed charcoal to a long bamboo stick, so he could design the exquisite chapel at Vence in southern France, as well as inventing a whole new medium: the cut-out.
Many people want to work part-time after official retirement to avoid boredom, maintain connections, enhance pensions and to have an inducement to leave the house. Yet a high proportion of us, about half, retire having made no plans to scale down one’s work activities or commitments. Instead, just one day ending work for good.
I am 82 years old. I have worked non-stop for the last 65 years and never missed a day’s work through sickness. I have enjoyed two most fulfilling careers in the British Army and as a civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence, and a wonderful range of work and voluntary roles since my retirement to Malta 22 years ago.
When I think of the bleak alternative to old age, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have the energy to pass on my experience of life to others. What the young can’t grasp is that most older people don’t feel so different from their youthful selves. Although we may appear drab outside – wreckage to the eye and mortified by mirrors – inside we still flame with the wild spark of youth. Long may it continue.