Rita Battig,  57, Swiss

What does age esteem mean to me?  I know I am much more self-secure with myself at my age than I was when I was younger because of my experiences, good experiences, bad experiences, people I met; and that gives me age esteem.  I must say that I have lived abroad quite often so I am not a typical Swiss, Swiss.  I’m proud of that, actually.

Health is a priority as I age.  To be independent, moving around without anyone’s help is a concern.  As I’m married and without children, loneliness is also a concern.  I don’t know how my years to come will be.  I am still working and still have seven years to go before my pension.  Then I don’t know.  My health is still in good shape.  I love traveling so I would like to travel and be self-sufficient.

Rita’s Tips: Be on the move physically and mentally.  Meet people from other cultures.  I think nice encounters can happen and friendships grow.  I’m lucky I still have friends from where I stayed in England, Spain and South America.  If possible give good advice to young people from your experience.   Guide young people if they let you.   Sometimes they don’t.  Now days they know everything better.  It’s another time than when we were young.  We depended more on older people than they do now.  But I would like to give my experience further.

Self-confidence comes with experience.  I notice that young people today are more self-confident than we were.  It is tricky sometimes because they think they are but they lack a lot of experience and judgment as well.   Be happy and not to be taken away by the consumerism.  Now, especially here in Zurich it is money, money, money.  Too many people identify themselves with that.  So for me that’s a big danger.  Keep to the family, do not drift apart.  Realize where you come from.  I think this is more important than anything else.

Rita Battig volunteers to help at conferences, etc. to use her knowledge and skills and make new contacts.

Bonnie Fatio

Bonnie Secrets to AgeEsteem age-esteem, Bonnie Fatio, loneliness, Rita Battig, secrets of age esteem, self-confidence

The following was sent by a reader.  The source is unknown.   It gives an interesting approach to  youth as a state of mind.

Youth is not a time of life.  It is a state of mind.  It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips and supple knees. – It’s a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.  This often exists in a man of fifty more than a boy of twenty.

Nobody grows old merely living a number of years.  People grow old only by deserting their ideals.  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  Worry, doubts, self-distrust, fear and despair – these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and star-like things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing child-like appetite for what next and the joy and game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite, so long you are young.

When the wires are all down and all the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed and may God have mercy on your soul.                                                                                                                             Anonymous

Bonnie Across-generations grow old, self-confidence, state of mind, youth