Medical Matters:Trying to describe ageing has much in common with St Augustine's famous observation on the nature of time.
What, then, is time?
If no one asks me, I know what it is.
If I wish to explain it to him who asks me,
I do not know.
Augustine, Confessions, Chapter XIV
We all have a sense of what it is, yet may find significant difficulties in articulating this to others. When we do try, our explanations will vary remarkably: it is also likely that many will emphasise the negative aspects of ageing at the expense of the positive aspects.
A balanced view is important: illness and bad things happen to people at all stages of life, and most of us wish to rise above an illness and affirm our innate humanity and personality.
Also, many of the intrinsic qualities of ageing - experience, wisdom, stoicism, good strategic thinking - are generally helpful aids in dealing with the difficulties associated with age-related disease and disability.
A seminar on Creativity and Ageing, hosted by the Irish Gerontological Society last month, provided insights into how we might better understand the benefits of later life.
Understanding complex ideas is often helped by the use of metaphor, and the creativity of later life allows us a unique perspective on the benefits of later life.
Ageing is at once complex and simple. It occurs from the moment we are conceived, and at all ages is associated with growth and loss. For example, at the age of seven there are things that we can no longer do that we could do with ease at the age of two - learn a language perfectly, learn to walk, put our toes in our mouth. In general we have grown accustomed to unconsciously doing the calculation that the growth side of the equation more than adequately makes up for the losses, to the point that we do not even consciously recognise the losses.
This occurs to such an extent that the lay public unconsciously associates the word ageing with old age, and usually in negative terms.
Why is it important to discuss ageing in the context of it occurring at all ages? Precisely because much of the negative attitude to old age is due to a failure to recognise the positive and negative sides of ageing at all ages. An undue emphasis on the negative side colours the climate within which you or your loved one will (or will not) receive care, services as well as the standard of those services.
If society diminishes the value of ageing, then the political emphasis dwells less on services for older people - the adult group for whom services are most clearly needed. Worse, the very welcome increase in life span may be portrayed in falsely apocalyptic terms, propagating the myth of the burden of ageing.
Considering late life creativity allows us to appreciate the complexity and benefits of later life.
In the National Gallery of Ireland, you will be struck by the wonderful Louis le Brocquy tapestry spanning the height of the entrance hall of the Millennium Wing, a vibrant and glowing product of an artist in his 80s. Further into the gallery is his portrait of Bono, from his 83rd year, and showing the artist in his prime, yet still catching the zeitgeist.
Another great Irish artist, Jack B Yeats, dominates the Yeats Room. A case can be made that his greatest (and most radical) paintings date from the age of 70 onwards. The gallery shows similar great paintings from artists, including Titian, Cézanne, Tiepolo, and Corot, all painted after 60.
Late life skills are not confined to painting - great architects (Frank Lloyd Wright, starting the design of the Guggenheim museum at the age of 76), writers (Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, Samuel Beckett, WB Yeats), musicians (Handel, Haydn, Wagner, Liszt, Janacek) and statesmen (Winston Churchill during the second World War, Ronald Reagan, De Gaulle and Mannerheim) also display the increasing mastery that later life can bring.
These skills might seem far removed from you or a frail older relative, but these positive achievements are mirrored in a more everyday way in how older people achieve their goals.
They use their wisdom and life experiences in a very positive way to steer their way around what others might see as obstacles.
An increasing body of knowledge points out how older workers are among the most cost-effective and useful of workers.
They tend to cause less problems with absenteeism and are mature and pragmatic in how they deal with work issues, such as faults in the system.
Using similar adaptive mechanisms, older drivers, despite having slower reaction times, more arthritis and eyesight difficulties, are the safest group of drivers on the road.
The positive aspects of ageing are part of the solution to the losses of later life, and an ongoing challenge to Irish society is to how to best work in harmony with the everyday creativity of older people (us as we age) so as to maximise their (and our) quality of life.
Prof Desmond O'Neill is a consultant geriatrician and director of Aois agus Eolas, the Centre for Ageing, Neurosciences and the Humanities, at the Adelaide and Meath Hospital Dublin.