Mind Moves: The implication of George Bernard Shaw's statement that "youth is wasted on the young" is that with age comes perspective, with living comes learning, with experience comes wisdom and with time, an appreciation of time's passage.
How ironic to know the value of what one possessed only when ownership has ended; to recognise the riches of being young when youth has passed, to spot the pitfalls from their depths or know which roads to choose having chosen otherwise.
If I knew then what I now know is the frequent regretful refrain of age. What wisdom would have shaped our lives if we had been concurrently bestowed with youth's time and age's wisdom?
The wisdom of age is not the gift of the young and the timelessness of youth is not bequeathed to old age.
Of course, for some, fortune and chance combined to grant them with what they would have wished. Serendipity sent them to careers they treasured. Happenstance produced life partners of love, commitment and integrity. Life's hurdles were placed beside appropriate supports. Misfortune did not visit maliciously.
Others were challenged by hardship, hurt by hard luck, hardened by hurt. Some took up the tasks of their time, challenging inequities, ardent adversaries against the perceived injustices of their time thereby altering the future for future generations. Thus each generation has its own journey, its right to its own determinations and its own contribution to make to the past, the present and the future.
Individuals also assert their entitlement to make their own mistakes. "Learning the hard way" is the colloquialism for regretful retrospect when in later life some discover that their "elders" had helpful perspectives had they been attended to. Conversely, others who heeded warnings wished they had listened to their hearts and dared to do what is now undoable. Life is to be lived and it cannot be forsworn. Each must plan his or her life path.
The question is, then, how can we at any life stage learn from the present, forestall the future and plan for what lies ahead? This is not just a question for the young. It is a necessity for those who are older, never more so than now.
In a world that is fearful of age, rather than reverential before its wisdom, dismissive of its needs rather than respectful of its rights, disdainful of its abilities and indifferent to its contribution, it is time for those who are older to plan for themselves together.
The deficit description of age dismisses the important different and extensive abilities of older people. This deficit model ignores the research which shows the important contribution older people make, the fact that many are far more flexible thinkers, able to debate many sides of an argument, that they may have greater appreciation of social change and of the many perspectives and points of view that people hold. They may have a talent for tolerating ambiguities and a capacity for complex thinking because they understand that few issues are black and white.
They have witnessed personalities, communities and ideologies rise and fall. They have lived through and adapted to changes in society. They have nothing to prove: their survival is proof of their talent and tenacity in a changing world.
It is when one is in this non-dependent assertive older age that plans for the future should be made. The body does not keep apace with the mind and the decline in physical ability is one of the aggravating grievances of advanced age, to be catered for before it occurs.
This includes making sensible provision for the future by obtaining good legal advice in the present about what you wish to happen in the event of becoming physically less able, psychiatrically ill or generally unable to cope.
Decisions about whom to trust with power of attorney should that become necessary and a will that stipulates it cannot be changed without the presence of certain specified people ensure that coercion by the unscrupulous cannot occur.
Many people prepare practically by planning maintenance-free homes and installing the requirements for a less physically able time in advance of requiring those aids and implements. These might include speaker and mobile phones, panic buttons, alarm systems, implements to assist lifting, to aid opening bottles, jars and tins, to retrieve fallen objects, to facilitate mobility.
Some install chair lifts, accessible showers and baths; high placed electrical sockets, adjustable beds and remote controls for all appliances.
Some people check out protected private housing for elderly people, properties that have maintenance staff and access to nursing staff as necessary. Others visit nursing homes and decide where they would wish to be if necessary. Planning for the future liberates the present.
Once planned it is time to live it up, time to show that while "youth may be wasted on the young", age is not wasted on the aged.
"Old age ain't no place for sissies," Bette Davis once said. She was right. Age is an accomplishment. It is an assertion of adaptability, recognition of resolve, determination of doggedness and a celebration of assertiveness. It tells us there is a future. It assures us that we too can challenge time.
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin.