Less stress? Be healthier? Better relationships? As Kiwis set their resolutions for 2022, three Bay of Plenty centenarians share what they have learned about how to live well in their collective 311 years of experience. Emma Houpt reports.
Compromise and helping others.
These are two tools Tauranga man Doug Bullick reckons have helped him live a "very stressless" 100 years of life.
Bullick, who grew up in Dannevirke, says he was raised to know the importance of meeting others halfway.
"You can't always win.
"We were bought up trying to help people when we can and being prepared to compromise. Don't get into a big argument if you can avoid it."
He is married to 95-year-old May Bullick.
The couple, who have lived in their own home at retirement village Greenwood Park in Welcome Bay since 1998, have five children together.
The family spent much of their lives on a farm in Rukuhia where Bullick worked as an engineer for the Waikato Power Board.
Since school days he had taken up leadership roles in groups and committees including Scouts, school Board of Trustees and local Rotary clubs.
And he also believes "going with the flow" and compromising had contributed to decades of happy marriage with May.
"May and I have been married 73 years and it has been a very happy relationship really. We have never had any big arguments."
The pair met at the start of a six-week boat voyage from England to New Zealand.
"I went down for the first meal on the boat, the steward told me to 'sit there'. I sat down and looked around and they were all women except for one other bloke," he says.
"I thought, 'I am getting out of here' and then I saw May. We were engaged by the time we got to Panama."
Bullick couldn't think of any incidents in his long life that had "jolted" him or changed his outlook on the world.
And he believes keeping stress levels low may have helped him live a long life, but says it would be a "tough time" to be young person in today's world.
"Today so many people are under stress, they have mental problems, which we have been free of completely.
"We have had a very stressless life.
"The world is totally different now. You have only got to open the paper - murders and all of that. It never used to happen years ago, it was very rare to have a murder."
Asked his advice for younger generations, Bullick says it would be to "think of other people and look after your neighbour".
Moderation was also a priority for Bullick, who is sure to get in his porridge every morning and have a Corona with dinner.
The couple's spare time is spent reading, talking to extended family, listening to the radio and simply being with each other.
Staff at Greenwood Park also describe him as a "computer whizz" as he confidently pays bills online and uses a smartphone.
"I am pretty happy and healthy, but I have difficulty walking. I am not very confident even if I have a walking stick. But otherwise, I don't think I have any other problems.
"Count your blessings and get on with it."
Rotorua 107-year-old Ella Wilson says she is starting the new year feeling "jolly lucky" to be one of the oldest people in the country.
She's lived through pandemics, war and has outlived two of her children but still believes in the importance of having a positive outlook in life.
Wilson, who was born in 1914, lost her mother to the Spanish flu epidemic at age four and was then separated from her father and four brothers.
She still remembers a truck filled with bodies coming to pick up her mother after she had passed.
"Dad went off to work and when he came home his wife had gone."
She was then briefly taken to a care home with one of her brothers before being sent to live with relatives.
"I remember being in a hospital home in a cot with my brother. I don't remember going there and I don't remember coming out.
"But I remember standing there and being so thrilled with the nightie I had on. It had all fancy work on it. We just stood in that cot and watched what was going on."
Her grandmother felt it wasn't appropriate for her father to raise them alone with a housekeeper so much of her childhood was spent with other relatives.
But despite the struggles she remembers most of her childhood fondly – having "free fun" racing hand-built cars, playing sport and digging caves.
"I did enjoy our life. And now the children come and sit in front of the television and that is it. We used to get out and dig caves and all kinds of good things. We had a lot of free fun and enjoyed it very much.
"I always believed there was a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. I wondered when we would see it. But now I realise we had that pot of gold at our foot all the time."
At age 21 she married John Wilson and the couple went on to have three children.
John, who passed at age 72, was absent for long periods when he went to war. Wilson stayed at their Cambridge home and cared for the children.
It was a time in her life where she learned to "just get on with it".
Asked her advice to younger generations, Wilson says it is pointless to share.
"They wouldn't listen to me for a start. I don't think they would listen. They are so positive with what they are doing, aren't they?
"But if you want anything – get up and do it.
"Count your blessings and get on with it."
In Tauranga, 104-year-old Edna Ralston reckons she doesn't have any secrets to living a long life.
She says it's important to live simply and "just keep going".
"I don't get down. I just keep going," she says. "I just love to have an easy, easy life."
Having never been able to drive, she got around on foot for most of her life.
"I used to walk everywhere. I couldn't drive so I walked everywhere to get my groceries," she says.
And Ralston considers herself lucky to have never been impacted by any major health issues.
She married husband William Ralston and the pair raised three children in Dunedin, where she was born and raised. He passed away in the early 1990s.
She lived alone until she was 103 and then decided it was time for care and moved to the Cedar Manor.
Ralston is set to celebrate her 105th birthday on January 9.
"I don't feel 104. I just feel like an old lady," she said.
Asked if she could give any advice to her teenage self, she responded "just be happy".
"Just live a normal life. Get up in the morning, get your meals, go to bed and live another day."
