Are your schooldays really the best time of your life? Or is life really better as a 70-something than as a teenager? Some people tell ANNA CAREYabout their golden age, and how old they really feel
DAVID NORRIS
Senator and campaigner
“I can tell you exactly what the best age is,” says Senator David Norris, aged 66. “It’s 18. I always wanted to be 18 but that one year didn’t last long enough so I decided to extend it. I’ve now been 18 for over 40 years, and it’s wonderful.
“As long as you remain curious about life, engaged with people of all ages, involved in your community, with all your mental faculties and in reasonably good health, you can be whatever age you choose. The trick is to keep that sharpness of perception and that wonderful sense of being alive in every one of your senses. That’s what was wonderful about being 18, especially as I was athletic – I played rugby and tennis and swam so I was in pretty good shape.”
Norris was very happy throughout his secondary school days; his earlier childhood, however, was more difficult.
“When I was seven, I was sent to a very upmarket boarding school which was like a borstal with sadistic teachers. It was horrible.”
And as a young gay man in an era when homosexuality was still criminalised, Norris acknowledges that the golden age of 18 would have been much better if he’d been able to be open about his sexuality. “But I was still human. And I was falling in love for the first time – which was still wonderful.”
MAEVE BINCHY
Novelist
“I’ve been friends with a retired high court judge in his 70s since we were teenagers,” says Maeve Binchy. “He and I often ask each other ‘what will we do when we grow up?’ I’m now 70 but I feel as though I’m in my late teens or early 20s in my mind. I feel as strongly about politics and society as I ever did.”
Binchy enjoys growing older. “There’s a great relief about it because all the anxiety and self-consciousness of youth has completely vanished. It’s all much nicer now. And I laugh as much as I laughed when I was 18. When I was young I thought laughing was over when old age began. But my friends and I find things to laugh at all the time and I spend literally zero time regretting the past and thinking of good old days. I’m really quite contented.”
In fact, she finds being 70 is much better than what are supposedly the best days of your life.
“The late teens were the most difficult time,” she says. “It’s very awkward. Today, that’s probably the case for 12- to 14-year-olds. There are the anxieties about whether people like you or not, and you measure yourself against hopeless ideals. Nothing after that time is ever as anxiety-making again.”
CLAIRE BYRNE
Presenter of the Daily Showon RTÉ 1
Thirty-five-year-old Claire Byrne doesn’t believe in idealising your past. “If you’re looking back to what you think was your golden age, what have you got to look forward to? I didn’t really struggle in my teenage years, but if I thought the best days of my life were my school days, I’d be quite depressed. And if you think your happiest time was at college, when you had no money and were living on beans, maybe you won’t strive to have a good time now.”
Byrne believes every age has its own challenges and advantages, but says she’s looking forward to the future.
“If you can set yourself up properly, old age might be the prime of life, depending on your circumstances. If you’re healthy, what could be better than not having to work, and being free of the tyranny of a mortgage? And you should have learned life’s lessons, so you might avoid pitfalls younger people fall into. You can stop striving for unattainable prizes.
“In work, you’re always looking for next best thing, and perhaps later you can stop doing this and accept that you did what you could with what you had.
“And of course, if you had a little bolt hole in the south of France that would make it all much more palatable . . .”
NAOISE NUNN
Founder of the political cabaret Leviathan and Mindfield
“1990 was my year,” says 38-year-old Naoise Nunn. “I was feeling grown up for the first time. I did my Leaving, there was that wonderful World Cup, I was travelling, going to college, making that transition to adulthood. So for me being 17 and 18 was great. When you’re that age, you still behave like a child from time to time but you can also do grown-up things.”
Nunn isn’t surprised that a lot of people say they still feel the same as they did in their late teens or early 20s. “Your brain reaches a certain level at that age and after that, your wiring doesn’t change too much so you’re essentially the same person. You can still catch yourself looking through those 18-year-old eyes and then have to say ‘cop yourself on, you’re 38!’”
If there’s a difficult age, Nunn thinks it’s “early teens. It was very tough. You’re making that transition from childhood and you don’t really become comfortable with those changes until you reach about 17.”
So is there a golden age? “I think there probably isn’t. Or maybe there is, but you won’t recognise it until it’s gone.”
SUZY BYRNE
Blogger at mamanpoulet.com
“I don’t think there’s an ideal age,” says 40-year-old blogger Suzy Byrne, who has been an advocate of both disabled and gay rights for years. “There’s never been one for me. I’m happy to have reached 40 and maybe also relieved. If you have a disability maybe you think about growing older differently; you worry more about what will happen.” Byrne has always defied traditional expectations of age.
“I was always a gobby young one. I worked on Mary Robinson’s campaign when I was 20, and when I was 24 I spoke in Central Park in front of thousands of people at the 21st anniversary celebrations for Stonewall [the birth of the American gay rights movement]. By the time I was 25 I had loads done, and I slowed down by going to college.”
Having gone into menopause in her teens, Byrne began HRT in her 30s to improve her bone density, effectively hitting puberty for the first time. “It’s been bizarre but it didn’t make me feel younger. Or older!” She has no desire to be in her teens again. “I think being young can be extremely difficult; you can cope with trauma and disappointment much better as you get older. It’s important to be told it gets better.”
AOIFE McLYSAGHT
Scientist
Aoife McLysaght, a scientist at Trinity College’s Molecular Evolution Lab is happy being 34. “When I was in my early 20s, I was in a bit too much of a hurry to grow up. I felt I had to get a job and then life would be settled. Now I’ve reverted a bit. I’m not so interested in being settled, I enjoy the fact that things are changing and there are lots of surprises. I’m doing lots of different things I wouldn’t have imagined being part of my career – like talking at the Electric Picnic last summer. I never thought that as a serious scientist I’d be giving a talk at a music festival!
“I should probably have been more wild in my 20s, but I thought there was a direction that I needed to follow. Now I’m happier with the idea that I don’t know where things are going. In many respects I feel more myself now than in my 20s.”
So while she’s happy growing older, did McLysaght have a difficult age? “I don’t think any time was particularly difficult, things always balance out. I was happy at school – I wasn’t the most popular, but I had friends and I wasn’t bullied. But maybe if you transplanted me to my late teens I’d be horrified to have to live a day in the shoes of 18-year-old me.”
GARRETT FITZGERALD
Politician and writer
“If you retain your interest in people and the world, even if you aren’t very mobile, you will feel as you did when you were younger,” says 86-year-old Garrett FitzGerald. “There are always things to be done, to write about, advocate. There’s not much difference between being young and old. You gain experience along the way and some maturity so you can make wiser decisions – or less stupid decisions. Otherwise, internally, I don’t feel any different.”
FitzGerald has always been open to learning from people of all ages – as a lecturer in UCD in the 1960s, interacting with his young students changed him from “a very conservative person [to] a reforming social democrat”.
But he has particularly fond memories of his late 40s. “I became minister for foreign affairs [after the 1973 election] just after we joined the European Union. It was a chance to develop Ireland’s foreign policy, and that was a exciting period. My wife greatly enjoyed it too, though she didn’t like the idea of all the travel at first. After that her health deteriorated so everything became more difficult, but at that time she was in very good shape. So in some ways, foreign affairs was the peak of our joint career.”
