Are There Any Benefits to Getting Older?

ARE THERE ANY BENEFITS TO GROWING OLDER?

I suppose the answer to that question is: it depends on the age of the person you are asking. If it were a sixteen year old, obviously the answer is ‘Yes’, but if they are seventy, well – as Bette Davis once said,‘ Getting old is not for wimps’.

So many articles are published exhorting everyone to lead healthy lives, exercise, diet; all emphasising the need to ‘keep young’ and put off the fateful. Such advice can be depressing or even counter-productive when you’re already romping up the straight to old age and everything soft is going south – boobs, tummy, bum, chins, and your hard bits ache when it’s cold or raining. You can make an effort to keep as healthy as possible, slow the process, but there is no reverse gear unfortunately.

The greatest benefit of age is retirement, but even then many people dread the empty hours looming ominously ahead. Especially if they have been active in sport or perhaps keen gardeners and can no longer pursue these pastimes. What to do if you can’t play your favourite sport - watch it on TV? It would use up some time, as would looking round the shops, but both activities could soon pall. And there’s no use looking back through rose-tinted glasses pining for when you were young and active. Even if you adore your grandchildren, do you really want to be their main carer in an effort to re-visit that time? You’ve been there, done that and these years of freedom will not come again, so use them for yourself – exercise the brain. No need for that to become arthritic.

Some people can’t wait for retirement so they can concentrate on hobbies previously squeezed into odd moments. For them, work interfered with what they really wanted to do, but others are lost souls without a structure to days and weeks, and don’t know where or how to begin filling their time. The most contented retirees form a fresh routine. They find something to study – anything from a foreign language to making greeting cards - and go to classes. No matter if it is a passing fancy, they try anything and when they’ve had enough move on and try something else. There’s time to be a dilettante when you’re retired.
Older people by the thousand are buying computers and getting to grips with the intricacies of accessing the Internet, either for information or to keep in touch with family and friends. It’s best to join a class initially to learn the basics rather than tackle this alone, but it’s an investment for the future if you need to shop on-line.

Retirement can be a time to make new friends, invaluable if you have lost a partner or old friends and family live far away. There are so many groups catering for retirees these days. Although some are expensive (many older people have financial restrictions), there is no need to look to a bowls club or high priced art or keep fit classes for occupation. The University of the Third Age has a very modest annual fee (

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