Age ... what it means ...

I'm going to write about age and what it means when we say the word older to define perhaps a quirk of nature in someone we haven't met and apply the word to, some people become immediately offended with certain words but that is more to do with their own discriminatory view on life than anything else. A child can be deemed to be young and old depending on their experiences of life, people, situations they may find themselves in, that doesn't mean taking advantage of children or corrupting them, growing a tough patina requires mental strength and good physical health, and experiences that relate to children with other children, that is what is essential to cope with school as with life, that's the foundation, and a good family relationship, and it may be a tough school environment that child is entering and that child has to be able to age enough to cope with the demands life places on them in those situations; or it may be a normal school environment where teachers and pupils understand the roles each have to play as they become older. So, here already we have found one or two definitions for the word age, and what it means to age. However, we have to be realistic as adults about what it means to age the best way is gracefully of course, and it helps to have the mental agility to be able to make important decisions as people age and become older. It is true that people grow or evolve as human beings as they become older not only physically but mentally, and that's important to sustain them going forward into their lives. So, people need to know their boundaries with regards to ageing. Another way to look at this is, for instance, if people start to cross-negotiate with others of a different age group, a different generation to theirs, they themselves become confused because the dialect is different, it's like visiting a country people don't know very well, they speak a different language, culturally and literally, and are themselves confu-sing because of the mixed messages they are sending to people in their age generation community of olders, or youngers, because they cannot appropriately cross reference one or other to make sense of their lives, not really. The ageing process has many parallels - and as people age it's important to understand that what they do to their bodies has an implication on the way they look and live their lives. As soon as people age-negotiate they become burdened or bogged down with the instructions manual that is the reality of communicating and living with the older generation from the younger generation perspective. They cannot cross-reference because their realities are different, they are as disparate to one and the other as Mars is to Earth, like a person who has an academic education and another person who doesn't, that in itself can be problematic in any relationship because the most fundamental importance in any relationship is missing, that of understanding one another, which may or may not be the case, if people do not fully understand one another at least intellectually, the experience remains static and they cannot move forward. If the experience is positive, for those people who fall away from those parallels, one way to reduce those differences is to introduce a communicating tool that facilitates a way forward for those who have those kinds of experiences, the most obvious route to applying such a tool is through education and gaining experience through knowledge which is a learning process and a work in progress for most people. Moving forward, what people put on their bodies has an implication on the ageing process. Make up, do you wear any, I don't, can affect the ways a skin ages - if it is clogged up and blocked up with make up skin which is a living organ cannot renew properly, because it's too busy eating away at the make-up for toxins to evacuate, and that makes the skin sluggish and it loses it's vitality. Drinking alcohol, for me, minimum, reduces oxygen to the brain, and has an effect on ageing for all the obvious reasons - do you stay up late, I don't, usually, people age more quickly if they are not resting for long enough either for mental assiduity to live life healthilly and for skin to work through a rejuvenating procedure, as well as everything else about your body, not just your skin, but for the purpose of facilitating ways to explain our subject with some good examples, then skin is good to illustrate time essential to rest and to refresh because its what we see, it's what's on show. What we don't see is a different story, and once burned twice shy at least for the wise and that analogy may be applied as often its necessary to do so.  Moving on, being sexually active or sexually permissive is not good for the ageing process. In fact, people can speed up death and they can look deathly if they are overly promiscuous because of the strain they are putting on their body, in particular, the heart and brain, which need rest, and affects mentally and physically those coping mechanisms which will disappear because of the pressures of sexual permissivness, it is abuse of self and of those they are sexually over-active with, as they turn that tourniquet, bash away at that shrew, as in Shakespeare, the shrew being themselves, the slut they cannot stand or beat off as they persist with their continual inappropriate sexual activities and slavish mores. It is a fallacy to say that sex keeps people young, that the exercise of sex delivers well-being, not so, it is difficult to see well-being generated out of those activities not only because of body abuse and those implications of but also chemical reactions in the body and serotonin a compound to be found in the blood, let us say, that are also inhibitors and work by transference of impulses from one nerve to another and helps create arousal, but arousal is only there for so long, and especially if sexual activity happens often, there is only so much serotonin the body can produce which affect those carriers; the body is not a fountainous, over-flowing cup of sexual compounds to be drank from at the click of the fingers and reality, the reality of non-transference of those factors which impinges on other factors that are necessary for arousal to occur, for instance, can cause depression and other dysfunctions in the body if those realities become prohibitive. So, let us not run away from the facts and realities of a promiscuous and thereby, abusive, sexual life. Most adults have experienced sex at some point in their lives, and most adults know that sex is merely an adjunct to their relationships, if sex falls away from that adjunct and becomes a runaway train, where sex is all there is to their lives that in itself is an illness and a difficult illness to cure and an infringing habit to break. Seeking thrills that are promiscuous thrills is also an illness too far. Those are areas of life I am not engaged in or wish to engage in. Keep the permissive society somewhere else, as far away from ordinary people's realities and my reality as it's possible to be. To continue, people require to stay in their own age appropriate group in relationships that are romantic or in any way professional because as soon as they step out of that age appropriate group they are posing some serious questions with regard to age and to themselves, who they are as people, what they become, because as soon as they age-negotiate, go outside of their age group, as I have said, that impermeable state of adolescence Ill fitted to those of mature years in experience, say, no-one is gaining any favours from projected experience, it's indefinable territory that's already been lived by the older generation, and its almost like an obfuscation takes place, where youth jump the age gap, without the relevant experience to handle the fall out of such obfuscations. Adolescents have not lived enough to inhabit projected experience, as I have said, and that can create an imbalance which sends the wrong message to others about their mentality, their sexuality, their physicality, and what they're saying to their family and friends about that. The only possible acceptable age appropriate group that may differentiate with one another is family, the family set-up has it's own dynamic, where there is that dichotomy in age difference and everyone in the family understand their age specific roles within that dynamic and within that family partnership, the dynamics are direct and succinct and age appropriate. Some adolescents go outside of that age appropriate remit, they confuse the situation, an inappropriate link or pattern starts to emerge or become established where adolescents are actually engaging with other people's grandmas and grandpas and even third generation grands, which really is not a healthy or in any way appropriate situation to be conducted by - and vice versa, where grand-children are looked upon as sexual objects by that older community or, again, vice versa, because that is what that older community in those specific environments see in those who are younger, and, worryingly by the younger community if they are sexualised, and those situations in themselves are inappropriate, those altered situations are not really appropriate age groups to engage with if they are outside of that family dynamic. Those are defined situations that are outside of the family group dynamic. If for reasons already explained the family dynamic does not work, it also creates a dysfunction in your family / friends relationships. Age appropriate groups are appropriate when it is the same age group, in social as in other interactive situations. It is immediately obvious and they stand out like a sore thumb when you see people shuffling about or preening around as a sixty-year old around a twenty or thirty-year old, for instance, for the purposes of propriety we won't go lower than twenty or thirty, any more or less defferentials than those - and, age is not maturity when we are looking at youth, youth by nature are inexperienced and don't carry the necesssry knowledge to make informed decisions, they will more likely be coerced into situations by those who are experienced and do carry a certain amount of knowledge which in the wrong hands or the wrong brain can cause chaos for all concerned - and it really is Illegal and not something to be displayed in normal polite society. The disconnect between those involved in age-inappropriate situations is mammoth - both in situations where those who are not age appropriate become involved and it really is a definition of old age carrying on with youth - it distances families because neither age group is being normal or loyal or correct or respectful or in any way thoughtful to their family group, if the family group encourage age-negotiations between the parties, and again, that too is likely to be illegal and as I said, going beyond the pale, their friends, people in different age groups that are young become uncomfortable as they see their potential girlfriend or boyfriend or friends engaging with people from the older community, and the older community inveigling youth space, which no-one understands and certainly not those who are involved who end up that way, and i cannot see any light at the end of that tunnel, really, and once the honeymoon period is over, and those involved are all at sea, and, hello, its back to school, and the realities of living with grandpa, or indeed, grandma, or carrying of grand-kids becomes an experience too far. It Is difficult to see those kinds of relationships having longevity, because of the pronounced differentiation in age or experience. It is completely inappropriate, those kinds of relationship are age disqualifies - nobody, ideally, wishes to confuse the two. Angela Maria De Nobrega Freitas, BSc Hons., Social Sciences, Open University, DipGeog., Open University Masters, MA, MLit., Literature, studied, Open University Masters, MA, MSc., MPhil., and Playwriting, studied, Birmingham University. ***************************************************************************