You know that feeling when you are young, anyone older than you seems soooo old? When you are a Kinder kid, teenagers are the really big kids. When you are a teenager, forty-year-olds are old and anyone over sixty - well, they are just ancient.
Up until I was in my 40s, I still often regarded older people unfavourably and without much appreciation. And so I wrote a little short story, which I enclose below.
I feel like my outlook has changed so much in the last decade or so. It could be because I myself have turned the leaf of mid-age or it could be because I have had the privilege of working with some remarkable "older" people with my storytelling practice.
I have come to realise and cherish the wisdom that is passed on from our elders. I now appreciate that old people were young once and on the inside the same essence of identity flows through them as it did long ago.
I have learnt the older generation has so much to give - all we have to do is ask.
They are our mentors, our guides, our safety nets and our holders of wisdom.
It is again, storytelling, that has taught so much about appreciating the elders. Over the last five years I have worked with the most remarkable, strong, intelligent and creative people, most of whom are at least 40 plus or often much older. They have constantly amazed me and have proven to me, again and again, that age is no barrier to the desire to 'play' and adding incredible value to society as a whole.
My story "The Old Lady" can be found at www.wolfpublishing.com.au/the-old-lady
