Dialogue: It's true that youth is wasted on young

By SANDY BURGHAM

I had a birthday last week. On some birthdays the festivities seem to go on for days once the celebrations with immediate family, extended family and friends are all accounted for. However, on other birthdays the wish to celebrate just doesn't seem to surface.

Last week's was one of those. I spent the day in wall-to-wall debates and when I had the opportunity to reflect it set my mood back even further. How could I suddenly be in my late thirties? How did I get myself into this mess?

A few joy germs rang during the day, now in their early 40s and allegedly feeling fantastic about it, but that wasn't enough to convince me that ageing was not an extraordinary bummer. I had seen the Straight Story, a wonderful movie about the determination of an old man who is driven with a need to reconcile with his equally elderly brother. One scene stuck in my mind. Our aged hero is asked by a youthful stranger, "What's the worst thing about getting old?" And he replies, "Remembering when you were young."

We all have our own indicators that we are indeed moving into age brackets normally reserved for our parents. A friend's moment of clarity occurred when he was eyeing up the CD collection of his junior staff and realised he hadn't heard of any of the artists. Another was hit with the notion when he started turning down the stereo because of the neighbours.

There are other telltale signs - like when you stop putting up posters and start buying art and when you sell your backpack at the garage sale. My own is when I found myself calling people behind shop counters "love" and they referring to me as "madam."

So why do most people over the age of 30 have a secret preference to be younger? For the past 30 years we have been a youth-focused society. Youth always gave people the licence to experiment, to revel in poverty, and be on the front foot when a new trend emerged. It was the oldies who were left behind.

Getting older represented getting your act together, acting your age, having it all sorted it out and supposedly being wealthier. Thus many 30-somethings live in the limbo of arrested development, stubbornly refusing to face the music.

The fear of turning prematurely into our parents has helped to push the concept of middle age - usually around the 40 something mark, right out to about 55. There is much age hypocrisy going around. We hear hackneyed expressions such as "you are only as old as you feel," and "age is a state of mind." But the same people who created this sort of propaganda use anti-wrinkle creams and hair-colourants by the truckload. Those who despair at others going under the knife for face-lifts would themselves consider eye-laser surgery if it were still covered by Southern Cross.

While many deny the vanity drive to look younger than they actually are, the boom industry of appearance medicine (cosmetic surgery without the knife) contradicts this.

Like most Western nations we have an ageing population and soon our nation's makeup will become top heavy. What will life be like? For the new oldies, the generation gap will close as technology becomes user-friendly and marketers start recognising them as a lucrative market and bring out exciting products and services to tempt them.

So what do my contemporaries and I have to look forward to? A friend who never sold her backpack imagines another backpacking OE, but one dotted with Michelin-rated restaurants and famous hotels.

Another friend is looking forward to "being more comfortable in my own skin - even if it is pulled tightly over my face and knotted at the top of my head." We'll want to enjoy the benefits of ageing but at the same time play at being young.

We project that with the establishment phase of life out of the way we can go about enjoying life not quietly but with all guns blazing. We won't begrudgingly take up outdoor bowls or housie. We imagine a life of travel, social sport and cafes.

Of course, just who is going to pay for our fabulous lifestyles is still unclear. The options seem to be either to bludge off the kids or to die happy, old and broke.