Staying young – no, thank you! by Heidi Hornlein

Spring of Life – full of dreams

Looking into the past

When I look back to my young years, 16, 20 (when I married first time) (when life seemed to be romantic love with lots of obstacles), 27 (when my father died and I finally completed my MA), 32 when I left my marriage to go to Italy to study Italian opera, 40, when I felt the physical need of procreation (which fortunately didn’t happen) – and on and on. Life was a constant struggle, a constant research of something which is missing and which I should get or work for.

Now, more than 20 years later, I feel a freedom and calmness which I never experienced before. Also happiness – yes, that’ts right. And that is not only my personal story!

In the contrary to what people normally think about Ageing: the older we get, the happier we become! Think back to your own young years: were you happy then? Really? Or more often than not confused, insecure, inexperienced, full of phantasies and disappointment when they didn’t work out. And scientific studies show that increasing in years is equal to increasing in contentment and happiness.

Staying young is the solution?

Do we really need to be able to do things like this?

So why do we still feel the need to pretend to stay young? Why do we try to be slim like when we were 20 and wear stuff which doesn’t really suit us, only because young people wear it? Why do we use tons of makeup to hide the maturing skin? Because “staying young” seems to be a request of a society who measures everything through the lense of productiveness and speed – the speed of young people.

Are they really more productive than the older ones? I doubt it. Look back into younger years of your life: you still had to learn many things which today you execute quickly and with ease, while then you spent hours to figure things out and get familiar with them. Speed, yes. Older people need to follow their own rhythm, which often is slower than that of younger people. But this is not bad at all: we see more, perceive more, reflect more, when we give things the right time. This is also true for younger people who often tend to skip these moments of wisdom and jump blindly into Doing.

My choice: being as old as I am

Me and Mark having lunch above the Amalfi Coast – HAPPY

I don’t want to end up saying that being young is “not good”, it has many good and desirable things, but the same is valid for older age. We have gained so much and so many new opportunities open up in every life period. That’s why Ageing is nothing we should fear, but embrace as the time of harvesting our life experience and of creating something new and amazing for ourselves and for others.

“Staying young” might be, in a certain sense, a metaphor for getting older. But personally, I wouldn’t want to go back in my life and start it from scratch, having to pass again through all the crab and all the difficulties which had been along the way. I am glad to be as old as I am. So if Faust offered me to re-do my life, to be young again, I would say: No, Thank you!