Simona Ferrar, 36, Spain

Age Esteem is self esteem related to age.  It means feeling good about yourself and feeling good about your age and the stage of life you’re in.

I think one of the main fears in my case is that I am 36 years old and I don’t have children yet, so that is my main worry concerning aging.  If one day I don’t have children I won’t be able to have them anymore.  So I think that is the most important one.  I am at the stage in life where that could or could not happen.   That is going to influence my life in a big way.  Otherwise I do see and feel my body change.  I see wrinkles and grey hair which I didn’t have before.  They just keep appearing more and more.  I’m kind of trying to figure out how to deal with them.  I’d like to say that they don’t bother me, but at the same time I feel they are new and I need to get used to them.

Since I also work in acting, appearance is quite important and is very much taken into consideration when people choose you for a job .  For example I did an audition for a role and I sort of suspected that they were looking for someone who was quite a bit younger; it was for television and for television they quite like to have someone with very young looks. They didn’t take me for that role, but then they called me for another role which I did get and am happy to have it, but I also realized it was a role of someone older who had a daughter of 20.  So I started calculating and realized I could be a grandmother already at this age.

Yes, I think that I am in a phase of figuring out how I want to deal with these issues.  A lot of actors and actresses do face surgery for this reason.  It is something I don’t really want to do now, or later, but it is something one thinks of and hears about in these professions.

In dancing there’s a tendency to say that you can’t dance after a certain age.  It is certainly true of ballet where it becomes very difficult to find a job after 35 or 40 years of age.  However, I believe that most dancers are able to dance after that age.  Someone just decided at some time that that age is no longer good for dancing.  Wonderful proof that this is not true is Sylvie Guillem who is still a ballet star at 46.  I’m not in ballet right now, and I also started dancing relatively late compared to standards.  At the same time I feel that dancing is something that I should be able to do as long as I want.  That’s exactly what I’m going to be doing, so I am organizing my life and my way of working in function of that.  That is why I am working on creations, because I know people won’t come and say you can’t create any more.  If you create your own work, then you get your job easily.  I think people are dancing to a later age.  One of my favorite choreographers is a person called Pina Bausch who passed away last year.  She’s a very well-known dancer in contemporary dance.  She’s a director of dance theater.  She’s German.  She died at the age of 68 and I saw her dance a few months before she died.  It was beautiful to see her dance.  She has people in her company who are past the age when one says they should start thinking of doing other things.  She actually did a big choreography of a 3 hour performance with people over 65 years old.  It was beautiful.  I loved it.  I think these things are happening more and more.  By the time I am 65 or 70, I think I will have a lot of co dancers that age.

Simona’s Tips: Aging comes with a lot of good things such as lots of experience, one’s own experience and the experience of others around one.  I feel I’ve learned so much.  The older I get the more I know and I get to know myself better.  I think there are a lot of people older than me around me, people in my family and other people I really look up to as being models for me.  I just feel their experience is so valuable, or just their being there for me is something very valuable.  I had and have such nice relationships with my grandmother on my mother’s side and with my grandmother and grandfather on my father’s side.  For example with my grandfather we had quite a formal relationship up until very recent years when we got really close.  For me these are special relationships which involve caring and just being with each other.  I really value these people and I think that society should.

Love your body and enjoy it.  Don’t let yourself think that you cannot do something because you are too old or too young.  If it feels right for you, then it is probably your right time.  The body is what one leaves when one dies so I think we have to enjoy it as much as possible.  That’s why I enjoy dancing so much.  It is a wonderful way of experiencing one’s body and expressing feelings.  There is a lot of humor in dance, too.  Enjoy your body.  What I see in people when someone’s happy is that  they are beautiful, whatever the age.  I know children are drawn to happy people. – And it doesn’t depend on age.  So yes, just enjoy yourself and your body and feelings and soul and the relationship with others through soul and body.

Simona Ferrar is an actress, dancer and choreographer.

Bonnie Fatio

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Arda Aghazarian, 30, Palestine

It’s not easy for me to say, but I’m 30 today.  I think I’ve said to you before that I’ve always thought that 40 is a good age, but 30 is not.  It’s like a transition.  What are you?  It’s difficult.  I’ve been battling with this for the past six months.  The difficulty for me is that I have a lot of dreams; I want to do a lot of things.  I think that the 20s are different.  It’s different when you say you are 20 something and then suddenly you are 30!

When I hear Age Esteem I think that this is the word that is always connected to the word self esteem.  It has to do with confidence and I’ve read your book, AgeEsteem, and taken in what you say, but to deal with it is something else.  I need to read the book often.   No matter how much reading I do, the fact is that today I’m a 30 year old and that’s a new reality for me.  It’s as if I need to remind myself every now what age esteem is all about and again that it is ok to be my age.  Your talk today was like a gift to me.  It was the reminder that I needed it on a day like this.

What are my concerns about aging?  First of all there are the social things I try not to be too concerned with, like you know, by this age you’re supposed to have done certain things.  You’re not married yet.  You don’t have kids yet.  If you have kids soon, should you hurry?  These are aspects I try not to think about too much.  I should try to evaluate my life based on my own thoughts, but it does affect me sometimes.  The other part is the personal, which is the body, and how much can you do now?  Like I still want to be a good runner now.  Should I be concerned that I will not be as good a runner as I was back then?  Things like that.  There’s also the loneliness factor and other issues I wouldn’t have thought of before.   Before I was a free soul I was travelling and suddenly I’m think I should have more people around me because I am getting closer to the future when I will need more people around me.  So it’s a different way of developing the future.

Arda’s tips:  I think one of the best techniques is to have good people around you who give you good energy.  This is very important because it is a waste of time to have people around you who make you feel bad about yourself.  I don’t want to say that you should put people in categories.  All people are good in general, but some people make you feel worse.  Earlier I would have said that you should accept all people and everyone should be your friend, but now that I’m getting older I see that some people are better off at a distance.  Suddenly I’m okay with that.  Just let me surround myself with people who are positive, who give me good energy.  That’s one of the good techniques.  Being among people who make me feel good about myself.  – And not just people, also things in general.   Books that inspire me, movies that educate me…

You know, anticipating turning 30 those past 6 months has been very difficult, but now that it’s happened, it’s happened and I’m looking forward.

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Isabel Contreras, 57, Switzerland

What comes to mind when I hear Age Esteem is having self esteem so that when you age you will feel good about yourself.  Age Esteem is about having self esteem while aging.  I suppose that for me aging is once you reach 55 onwards.

Isabel’s Tips: Because I am very active in the work that I do, my own concern with aging is that I want to look relatively fresh.  I feel very young inside so therefore I would like to look very young on the outside – and I know and see that gravity is inevitable in aging.  Sometimes I’m concerned about that.

Positive thinking is key.  I maintain a positive attitude in everything I do.  I keep my dreams high, exercise,  read positive books, and avoid being with negative people.  I think that has been the most important thing.

I would say that to age well you need to enjoy every day of your life, to greet every morning with love in your heart, and to be grateful to be alive and to enjoy every day as a gift from God.

Isabel Contreras is founder of  Life Motivations and an international trainer.

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Teresa Kaufman, 56, France

When I heard the term AgeEsteem the first time I thought it is truly learning or knowing how to get older in life and enjoy it and respect it. – And enjoy yourself as you get older.

It probably brought that to mind more than anything else because I’m here in Chamonix, France at the foot of the Mont Blanc where you have some of the greatest athletes in the world of mountain climbing and trail running, paragliding, delta planning, base jumping and sking.  I’ve seen so many people here afraid to get old and who do everything that they can to hide it.  It’s sad to see because they’re not going to win that game.  All they can do is fool themselves, but they can’t fool their surroundings.  Instead of fooling themselves, they should flaunt it and get older more beautifully in a handsome way.

Teresa’s Tips: The wording of age esteem and self esteem is so appropriate because I think you have to truly love yourself in order to hold your head up high through all different points in your life.  It’s something that I always appreciated seeing.  You can see it in someone walking down the street, just by the way they walk, the way they hold their body, the way they present themselves to other people.  It’s the way they present themselves to themselves in the mirror in the morning.

Our esteem comes and goes with life and good days and bad days.  Yesterday I said to a friend, “Today I’m in love with life.  I’ve got to take a picture because it won’t be like this tomorrow.  Let me take this picture because this is how I feel today.”  It’s being sensitive to the wonderful things in your life.  That could be a breeze.  It could be the light just before the sun goes down.  It could be birds singing in the morning.  It’s as simple as that.  That will help you enjoy your life.  And you can do that anywhere and under any conditions.  It’s about being sensitive to your environment. It’s my recipie for getting old in life.

Teresa Kaufman is a photographer whose photos capture the essence of life.

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