The Deep Years, as in very long lives.
It’s often said and rarely challenged, “Life is short.” No, I don’t think so. Life is long, slow, repetitive, and challenging for most. There is young, growing up, adulthood, the more settled middle years, and as the decades pass, there is old age, perhaps great old age, the deep years.
I was in Kaikoura, South Island, New Zealand, spending a few days staying with Grant, an age qualified, self-sufficient, independent-thinking, naturally optimistic ‘bloke.’
Talking one evening, I told him what I was doing, traveling the world and my growing interest in health and age. He paused for a moment. ‘What do you think about a hundred?’ I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained, ‘Have you ever thought about living to a hundred?’ I could see he was serious. ‘No.’ I replied honestly. ‘I never have.’ Grant smiled. ‘I’d like to live into the deep years; I’d like to be a hundred.’ I thought, what a tremendous ambition.
His phrase ‘Deep Years’ stayed with me; it was fresh and thought-provoking. It is a preferable way to describe the elderly and the very old and has no ageist baggage, which is why Deep Years is used in DiscoverAge when referring to great age.
The ‘Deep Years’ is another addition to DiscoverAge’s commitment to original thinking and new language about age.
The Deep Years are unexpectedly a happy destination. Society’s relationship with age changes the deeper the journey. In a famous research paper, ‘Is Wellbeing U-shaped over the Life Cycle?’ that involved over two million people in eighty countries, the results are extraordinary and consistent. ‘Whether rich or poor, single or married, people all over the world are most miserable in middle age. They are happiest in childhood and at the end of their lives. People in their eighties and nineties, the deep years, admit that life is difficult and growing more so, but they are content, focusing on what makes life worthwhile.’ It is the ‘Deep Years’ when we are finally deeply content.’
The Deep Years are also a time when society has an about-face, and there’s new respect and kindness for men and women who have lived so many years. For the first time in decades, their age is at last admired and respected.
They have survived, passed through the years when age is denied, and ‘fighting’ is popular, where every additional year is unwanted and unwelcome. In the deep years, every year is cherished and precious; it is a ‘blessed’ time of life when age is at last acknowledged as a wonderful achievement that should be celebrated.
The Deep Years, wrinkly, wise, content.