26 Aug 2007, ST
By Tan Hsueh Yun
SOME people will tell you that nothing good comes out of growing older.
The body goes to pot, the eyesight starts fading, the memory isn't what it used to be and now, you have to wait even longer to get your Central Provident Fund money out.
In her funny book about ageing, I Feel Bad About My Neck, American film director and writer Nora Ephron writes about the moustache women get as a very unwelcome present when they hit menopause.
And from reading the Neck chapter, I've realised that I'm in a whole lot of trouble. After a certain age, women have to cover up their wrinkly and wattly necks with scarves and wear only turtlenecks. I have a short neck. Uh-oh.
The men don't have it any better. About 10 days ago, Life! ran a piece by Financial Times columnist Peter Aspden about surviving middle age and still being cool.
He says it like it is, detailing the alienation from the younger generation, the difficult balancing act of a man literally caught in the middle - he's lived half his life, how best to live the other half?
What struck me about Ephron's book and Aspden's piece was how much concern there was over appearances.
They say that, apart from the physical deterioration, you have to deal with what people think of you. Fall in love and people laugh at you. Drive a very fast, brightly coloured sports car and people whisper about your mid-life crisis. Fail to bleach that moustache or cover up the wattle and face being socially ostracised.
Aspden even gives a set of rules to follow, ranging from whether middle-aged men should wear jeans (yes) to whether they should consider plastic surgery (no).
He calls them rules for 'a group of people who always thought they would never need them'.
And that was where he lost me.
I don't see why people who run companies (or even countries), who have raised children, who have eaten more salt than the rest of us have eaten rice, as the old saying goes, still need rules to live by.
At this point, I should confess that I have a vested interest in this. I am, after all, lurching towards middle age and even now, I don't want people telling me how I should live my life.
I may be the only one to feel that way. Just type 'rules' in the amazon.com search engine and you get pages and pages of book titles about them. They range from rules to help you find Mr Right and to conduct effective meetings to rules for marriage and for weight-lifting.
The slick marketing behind these titles targets what we've been conditioned to believe all our lives: follow the rules like a good girl/boy and everything will be okay.
I can think of no quicker route to fuddy-duddidom.
Rules make sense when you're young and don't know any better. But when you're older, they are really just a terrible hindrance.
They tell you to forget self-determination and give up engaging with life. They force you to follow a certain pathway when you should be doing what feels right for you.
Rules are there to smooth things over socially, to make sure nothing ever gets out of hand, to keep you in line. Notice how this benefits everyone but you?
They make it easier for marketeers to induce panic buying of products you don't need. Resist, I say, resist with all your might.
You've earned the right to make your own decisions with the knowledge gleaned from your life experiences.
Most of us make the right ones, whether it is about relationships or what to order in a restaurant. And if you have spectacularly bad taste in cars, clothes or hairstyles, well maybe it's just a quirky part of you that makes for interesting conversation. Even if you're not taking part in that conversation.
When I grow old, I'd like to be one of those people that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong mentioned in his National Day Rally speech last Sunday - Old PWA, or Person With Attitude. That's how feisty ex-academic Ann Wee, 81, describes herself.
Old Persons With Attitude don't care what others think of them. They don't need rules to live by. They just live.
So I salute all the ponytail-sporting, bright yellow Lamborghini driving, spandex-clad, wattle-revealing middle-aged people out there. Thank you for breaking the rules.
I can't afford a sports car and don't want one but I am nurturing my natural tendency towards crankiness very carefully. It should be totally full blown by the time I hit 60 and I shall unleash it with great glee.
Allow me this, at least, because having an attitude and breaking the rules look to be the only good things about growing old.
By Tan Hsueh Yun
SOME people will tell you that nothing good comes out of growing older.
The body goes to pot, the eyesight starts fading, the memory isn't what it used to be and now, you have to wait even longer to get your Central Provident Fund money out.
In her funny book about ageing, I Feel Bad About My Neck, American film director and writer Nora Ephron writes about the moustache women get as a very unwelcome present when they hit menopause.
And from reading the Neck chapter, I've realised that I'm in a whole lot of trouble. After a certain age, women have to cover up their wrinkly and wattly necks with scarves and wear only turtlenecks. I have a short neck. Uh-oh.
The men don't have it any better. About 10 days ago, Life! ran a piece by Financial Times columnist Peter Aspden about surviving middle age and still being cool.
He says it like it is, detailing the alienation from the younger generation, the difficult balancing act of a man literally caught in the middle - he's lived half his life, how best to live the other half?
What struck me about Ephron's book and Aspden's piece was how much concern there was over appearances.
They say that, apart from the physical deterioration, you have to deal with what people think of you. Fall in love and people laugh at you. Drive a very fast, brightly coloured sports car and people whisper about your mid-life crisis. Fail to bleach that moustache or cover up the wattle and face being socially ostracised.
Aspden even gives a set of rules to follow, ranging from whether middle-aged men should wear jeans (yes) to whether they should consider plastic surgery (no).
He calls them rules for 'a group of people who always thought they would never need them'.
And that was where he lost me.
I don't see why people who run companies (or even countries), who have raised children, who have eaten more salt than the rest of us have eaten rice, as the old saying goes, still need rules to live by.
At this point, I should confess that I have a vested interest in this. I am, after all, lurching towards middle age and even now, I don't want people telling me how I should live my life.
I may be the only one to feel that way. Just type 'rules' in the amazon.com search engine and you get pages and pages of book titles about them. They range from rules to help you find Mr Right and to conduct effective meetings to rules for marriage and for weight-lifting.
The slick marketing behind these titles targets what we've been conditioned to believe all our lives: follow the rules like a good girl/boy and everything will be okay.
I can think of no quicker route to fuddy-duddidom.
Rules make sense when you're young and don't know any better. But when you're older, they are really just a terrible hindrance.
They tell you to forget self-determination and give up engaging with life. They force you to follow a certain pathway when you should be doing what feels right for you.
Rules are there to smooth things over socially, to make sure nothing ever gets out of hand, to keep you in line. Notice how this benefits everyone but you?
They make it easier for marketeers to induce panic buying of products you don't need. Resist, I say, resist with all your might.
You've earned the right to make your own decisions with the knowledge gleaned from your life experiences.
Most of us make the right ones, whether it is about relationships or what to order in a restaurant. And if you have spectacularly bad taste in cars, clothes or hairstyles, well maybe it's just a quirky part of you that makes for interesting conversation. Even if you're not taking part in that conversation.
When I grow old, I'd like to be one of those people that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong mentioned in his National Day Rally speech last Sunday - Old PWA, or Person With Attitude. That's how feisty ex-academic Ann Wee, 81, describes herself.
Old Persons With Attitude don't care what others think of them. They don't need rules to live by. They just live.
So I salute all the ponytail-sporting, bright yellow Lamborghini driving, spandex-clad, wattle-revealing middle-aged people out there. Thank you for breaking the rules.
I can't afford a sports car and don't want one but I am nurturing my natural tendency towards crankiness very carefully. It should be totally full blown by the time I hit 60 and I shall unleash it with great glee.
Allow me this, at least, because having an attitude and breaking the rules look to be the only good things about growing old.
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