International Day of the older person

Today is a special one for older people and senior citizens around the world. Officials and politicians will be making speeches that focus on our age group, which is a growing section of the population. The media may also take this as an opportunity to publish interviews with older persons who have had an impact on society. Schools, public institutions and office buildings may also use the day for announcing activities that promote older persons. Did you know about this day? No, here is some information and background.

On 14 December 1990, the United Nations General Assembly designated 1 October the International Day of Older Persons. This was preceded by initiatives such as the Vienna International Plan of Action on Ageing – which was adopted by the 1982 World Assembly on Ageing – and endorsed later that year by the UN General Assembly. In 1991, the General Assembly adopted the United Nations Principles for Older Persons.
Almost 700 million people are now over the age of 60. By 2050, 2 billion people, over 20 percent of the world’s population, will be 60 or older. The increase in the number of older people will be the greatest and the most rapid in the developing world, with Asia as the region with the largest number of older persons, and Africa facing the largest proportionate growth. 

The particular needs and challenges faced by many older people are clearly required. Just as important, however, is the essential contribution the majority of older men and women can continue to make to the functioning of society if adequate guarantees are in place. Human rights lie at the core of all efforts in this regard.

September song

September is a special month, it is a time for the ending of summer, and the promise of fall. It is also a time of renewal. As a teacher, I was very aware of the fact that many students saw the first weeks of September as an opportunity to make a new or fresh start. Mother Nature loves to play games with us in September, the rain and winds come hard, and then the sunny days and heat of summer rebound. 

September is one of my favourite months of the year.  Days grow short when you reach September, and for many of us who are older, September is a time to cast our minds back to our youth and to look ahead to the short time we have left. 

I love the September Song, composed by Kurt Weill with Lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, as it speaks to youth, discovery, and the need for someone to be with us in our "golden years."

When I was a young man courting the girls

I played me a waiting game

If a maid refused me with tossing curls

I'd let the old Earth make a couple of whirls

While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls

And as time came around she came my way

As time came around, she came 

When you meet with the young girls early in the Spring

You court them in song and rhyme

They answer with words and a clover ring

But if you could examine the goods they bring

They have little to offer but the songs they sing

And the plentiful waste of time of day

A plentiful waste of time

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame

I haven't got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few

September, November

And these few precious days I'll spend with you

These precious days I'll spend with you

Working Together for Working Out

As a generation, we are tremendously health conscious.  That means that we are, as a group, highly aware of health issues and the need for plenty of exercises and a lifestyle that includes a good diet as well.  But there is a big difference between being health conscious and becoming active in a healthy lifestyle.  Many times, we may be well aware of what we SHOULD do to be healthier so we can live a longer and healthier life but following through on those goals is much more difficult than just knowing about them.

This is why having a partner in working out and making healthy decisions can make all the difference in the world.  We have seen a lot of changes to the marriage relationship occur over the years.  This is not just because of women’s liberation.  It also comes from huge changes to the way the work world functions as well as new parenting models and cultural shifts that have called for a real partnership in a marriage to cope with the new world we live in.  That is why the marriage partner is the best possible choice for someone to encourage you along in your path to a healthier lifestyle.

This is a good reason when you do make that New Year’s resolution to start working out and exercising regularly that you don’t keep your decision under your hat.  Share your goals of a healthier you with your spouse.  Almost certainly you will discover that he or she also has wanted to start a regimen of exercise and a sensible diet but they also were hiding that from you.  Why do we do that, even from our marriage partner? 

Well, part of it is that once you commit to a program of exercise and losing weight and you tell someone about it, you are stuck with going through with it.  You take away your backing out factor by giving someone else the opportunity to hold you accountable to your zeal later on when maybe sitting and watching TV is more appealing than hitting the track.  But another part of it might be that what a good workout looks like to your spouse may not line up with how you want to exercise.  So that independent spirit makes you want to go it alone rather than allow your spouse to hold that office in your life as your work out partner and accountability team member.

These are not very good reasons not to engage your spouse as a partner in a healthier lifestyle.  Disclosing to them your intentions is actually the best thing you can do because if you “stick your neck out” and let him or her know what you want to do, you will be accountable to do that next week, next month and routinely throughout the year until you hit your goals.  You will regret your decision when you feel your spouse is forcing you to go to the gym but you will celebrate your decision when you are coming home from the gym and you feel great from having a great workout.

Working as a team for a healthy lifestyle and weight loss is crucial when it comes to diet.  Exercise is great and even if you don’t lose any weight, starting and continuing an exercise program is good for ageing bones and muscles and improves stamina.  You will be delighted when you actually can squat down to pick up something off the floor and stand up again without help after a few weeks of exercise. 

But if you are going to seriously lose weight, you have to change your diet as well.  And that is impossible to do unless the spouse is helping you.  If both members of the marriage commit to a diet of healthy foods, eliminating deserts, chips and soft drinks and making foods from fresh ingredients, then you can keep each other on track by only allowing those foods in the house. 

This is good for both of you.  And as you see the scale report that you are actually losing weight for the first time in many years, you will have someone to celebrate with that the program is working.  Make it a healthy celebration but a joyful one because you both deserve it.

The plague of worry

My generations are no strangers to worry. It seems from the first decade we began to become aware of the world, there were big things to worry about. We were the generation to grow up with a reality that world destruction was possible at the hands of a man-made weapon that did exist and was pointed at them. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the decades when we were entering youth, it was common for us to have to run drills to hide under our desks as a defence against the arrival of a nuclear bomb. Even back then, we knew those desks were a faint defence against such a devastating weapon. I remember having to stay indoors, to wait until the radiation cloud blew past when the wind blew from the East and a Nuclear Test had taken place.

So from worrying about the draft, bomb, Vietnam or about corruption in government, we grew up as a generation of worriers. Of course, worry is endemic in the human psychology. And as we grew into adults, parents and the ones who would come to take leadership in the world, those worries of youth paled compared to the new responsibilities we faced.

This century brings the advent of the retirement years for us. Over the years, many have learned good coping mechanisms to defray some of the worries of life. We have learned that worry about money, their children or whether the car needs a new set of tires should be taken in stride. That is because to some extent, most of these issues can be solved. Money woes can be fixed with better jobs and money management. Kids can be corrected and turn out fine even if they have troubled youths. And new tires for the car are easy to buy.

But the worries of the retirement years are often beyond such short-term fixes. We tend to be hands-on managers who have charged through life with the attitude of, “let me at that problem. I can fix it.” But problems of ageing are not always as easily conquered as many of the problems we conquered in their younger years. Some problems that demand a different approach in the later third of life that we are approaching include…

• Incurable illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, ALS or other forms of dementia for which the only relief is death.
• Running out of money because Social Security was not adequate and life was too challenging to really save up for retirement.
• The prospect of passing many years in an old folk’s home with no hope of release and no physical resources to save oneself can cause panic attacks in many of us.
• Dire issues with adult children such as death or illness, marital woes or the need for grandparents to raise our grandchildren present problems to us that seem beyond our physical, emotional and financial abilities to solve.

These new worries are unlike the worries of their middle age years. These very real and dire problems loom even larger if we see them on the horizon. They can be made larger by being suddenly alone by the passing of a spouse. Now one of our primary resources for staying calm and solving problems has been taken away from us.

This is a time in life when more than ever we need to get a refresher course in stress management and learning that worry cannot solve these problems. And like our parents before us for generations, we too will learn to face retirement with grace and maturity and to live with problems with the same courage we faced down the problems of our youth.