Hardy Korver, 54, Netherlands

When I hear the term Age Esteem I think of you, Bonnie Fatio! (laughter)  What made me think about it even before my wife put your book AgeEsteem in front of me was the economic crisis.  I thought, “We’re throwing away a lot of experienced good people because of age.”  You see that the other generations that are now a bit more elderly didn’t screw up as much as mine.  It’s a good mix.  We should use the mix.  Mix high and low in both ages and experience.  Use them both.  We need both.  We need those people yet we’ve let them go way too soon and we haven’t really given them the respect and responsibility that they should still have.

I’m becoming a dinosaur myself.  In fact Age Esteem is written about me.  It effects my life too.  I am a dinosaur in my firm.  There are only three guys older than I am and I’m only 54, and feel like 45.  As juniors we ran to the older guys, but there aren’t any older guys left. Your wings are clipped when you’re older.  I don’t think I can do as much.  Or I can, but I’m not supposed to.  That is the problem where Age Esteem comes in.  You may live alone, but surely you are surrounded by others saying, “You can’t do that anymore.”

Hardy’s tips: Know the relativity of everything. Don’t dig yourself in too much to what you are doing at present because there is much more around you.

Get balance in your life.  Work is very important.  You get a lot out of it but grave yards are full of those people who couldn’t be missed.  I keep that in mind. Work hard and play hard.  At least if you play hard you enjoy other things.   I still have people around me who take four weeks holiday and the rest of the year they’re 100 km and hour, always.  I can’t believe that that’s good.  No one ever died from working hard.  They die because they don’t take a rest.  Relax some of the time.

It is more than just reloading the battery. I think that’s a poor description of just survival.  It’s getting inspiration, not only charging the battery but getting new ideas.  You don’t have the same energy as when you started out, so you have to grow.  It’s inspiration and that can only happen if you look around you in a different way.   I have gotten the nicest inspirations from very unexpected things that I see.  Like in Africa or my home, too.

Why is it that when someone says “sex” our ears perk up, and when someone says “age” we tend to tune out?

Actually sex and age have a lot in common.

• Both are three letter words.
• How you relate to each of them is dependent on your attitude.
• Your attitude toward each depends in great part on the attitude of your environment, what you were raised to believe.
• What you get out of sex and out of age is influenced by what you put into each.
• You control how you live with both your age and with sex.

Having an intimate relationship can improve your health and longevity.  – Just be sure to practice safe sex.

Pauline Mawaka in her interview (see March 21, 2010) referred to several secrets to her own AgeEsteem.

• Purpose: When she retired she began the Senior Women Citizens for Change in Kenya to combat the violence against older women.
• Passion:  She lives her passion for helping women.    “Women encourage me, so I keep my energy.”
• Control:  Pauline says, “I control my own life.   I control my thoughts and my body.”
• Sing:  Do something that you love, that lightens your heart.
• Reach out:  Pauline’s purpose is directed towards “shaking the world”, and bettering the lives of Kenyan women.
• Social contact:  She has regular interaction with others through her singing and work.
• Spirituality:  “Knowing that God loves me” makes it possible for her to continue despite difficult situations.

Pauline Mawaka   Executive Dir. Of Senior Women Citizens for Change

When Pauline Mawaka retired as a school teacher she decided to help change the lives of aging women in Kenya.  I had the privilege to meet Pauline in Nairobi and to learn first hand how she is going about this.  The following words are hers.

“After retirement I began creating awareness of violence against women and in other communities in Kenya.  I have been in most areas of Kenya to say that you must identify yourself as a woman in the community.  Speak out if you are violated.  No one else will speak for you.  Don’t be oppressed.

When women are beaten by their husband they feel that they let him down or failed.  They say they fell down the stairs.  Women are afraid to tell the truth.  We have now started to speak to schools and have women come out and say that they are beaten.  But the problem is that the Police laugh saying the problem is domestic.  This is changing as we get many women to come out.  At the grass roots they are still very oppressed.  I work in the slums of Nairobi.  Women who came from the country did so because their husbands violated them.  Then they come and stay with men in the slums and they are again violated.  They have a red eye or swollen cheek.  With time I think they will understand.  They’ve been oppressed for years.  It takes time.

I got married to a man who believed that a woman is a woman and her place is in the kitchen, but because I was involved in issues of women’s rights I decided I would say no to violence.  He still violates me, but I stand by my rights.  I have declared my rights.  My daughters too.  When a man came to marry my daughter, she said to me, “No, Mommy.  This man is like my dad.  I don’t want to marry him.”  She had seen her father shouting at me and telling me I’m stupid.  And that man is jobless.  I am the one who brings food on the table.  I am the one who has been caring for my children up to now.   He did very little to support.  But regardless of what he did I said that I wanted my children to go to school.  I wanted my children  to be educated.  All my 6 children have finished O levels.  One is working at the UN in NY as an accountant.  So it was like whatever this man was doing to me I didn’t care.  He couldn’t get me down.  I said I would stand firm and be sure that my children would have a good life.  They refuse to be violated.  To be married does not mean that I am a lesser person.

I sing.  When there are meetings like this, (World Council of the YWCA) I come.  Sometimes men don’t let us attend this type of meeting, but I do.  I control my own life.  I speak up.  My husband can call me a mushy brain, say that I am crazy.  Regardless of what I have been told I have walked and gotten on with my life.   Nobody lives my life except myself.  I control my thoughts and my body.  If I didn’t do that, I would not be here.  I would already be dead.  Although my husband never beat me, he abused me with insults.  When he says this I say Thank you.  All you say goes back to you.  I bounce them to you.

I still am here.  At the end of the day he lost his job.  I struggled as a teacher to provide and raise our children.  The man cannot say ‘Mama thank you, you are trying’.  Instead he says I am stupid.  I tell him stupid does not come into my mind but if you call me stupid I bounce it back to you.  One thing he has never done is to touch me.

I know I have a right in my home and in my country and I address it to other women.  I can help other women to say no.

I have a passion for women, and a purpose.  Sometimes when I listen to the women with their issues I just have water running from my eyes, but I know we can work together.  I must shake the world.  I can help women live happily.  It is because of violence that women cannot put food on the table.

When you are told from June to May that you are stupid, you believe you are stupid, you believe you are stupid.  Women encourage me so I keep my energy.  I think, God you love me and I will continue.”

It’s easy to distinguish that the rugby player on the right is Matt Damon, but who is he shaking hands with?  Is that Nelson Mandela or Morgan Freeman?

Don’t  miss the film Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood.  Morgan Freeman is exceptional in the role of Nelson Mandela.  Freeman had known for a long time that he would some day play the role of Mandela.   When Nelson Mandela’s autobiography was published in 1995, Mandela was asked who he thought could play him on screen.  He cited the name of Morgan Freeman.

In a recent interview in Switzerland published in Migros Magazine, his interviewer said, “Mandela is a wise man; he’s 91 years old.  You are also getting older and therefore also becoming wise?”   Freeman’s response was, “Careful.  I am getting older, but I am not becoming old.”

Age is an attitude.  Nelson Mandela, Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood share the fact that they are getting older – as are we!  They also share age-esteem with a positive attitude toward age that will keep them from ever becoming “old”.

Bonnie Fatio, AgeEsteem

Clint Eastwood

Isn’t it refreshing to see that this month’s top films include veteran actresses and actors? – And that they are starring in roles featuring their mature ages?

In these “Must See Films” we find Meryll Streep (60), Morgan Freeman (73),  Alec Baldwin (52), Steve Martin (65), with Colin Firth (50), and George Clooney who at 49 is bringing maturity to his charm.   Will he manage to cultivate the same charm that Clint Eastwood oozes at 80?

It takes AgeEsteem on the part of these icons of cinema to “act their age” on the screen, and to become real role models for us.  Thank you!

Meryl Streep

It’s so refreshing to have an actress who is not afraid to act her age.   Meryl Streep is an icon of AgeEsteem.  She glows from the inside, plays roles that make her seem real rather than beautiful (though beautiful she is!), appears in public looking like someone we would like to meet and sit down for coffee and laugh with rather than Ms Perfection Celebrity.   Her laughter alone captures your heart.

In the film It’s Complicated, she plays the role of a woman who has been left for a younger woman only to have her former husband fall in love with her once again ten years later.   She doesn’t try to dress or act younger, but flaunts her mature femininity and sexuality that is so attractive and appealing.  Somehow we almost feel sorry for her old husband who is unable to keep up with his younger wife and her son.

Great AgeEsteem lessons come out of It’s Complicated :

• If life is complicated, it is because we make it so.
• When we are blind sided by circumstances we gather our own internal forces and move forward.
• You are not the same person today that you were yesterday.
• Social life with friends and family is important.
• We are responsible for our own actions.
• Humor is delicious and healing.
• Having a purpose and loving what we do keeps us focused on positives.
• Values need to be taken seriously.
• Love is real at all ages.

One of my favorite card over the holidays is copied below.  – Not the message on the card, but the message of the sender.

Why is it a favorite?  Because the words of June, the friend who wrote it, express how she puts her AgeEsteem to daily use via her

• acceptance of her present health,
• positive attitude,
• gratitude for what she has,
• social contact with others despite not getting out and about,
• interest in the lives of others and what is happening,
• continued purpose and contribution to others.

Precious Ones,

I hope all is well with you and your family and that you will be together for a Happy Festive Christmas…

Things here are ok.  I’m having to use the walker all the time to get around and don’t go out, only to the doctors.  My son and his wife were here the first of Nov. and took me shopping for necessities but that’s it.  I’m just happy I’m here where there are people and I have a nice warm room and plenty to eat, and at 93 that is a lot – Especially when I think of how many older people aren’t warm or have enough to eat.

I finally finished the 60 Hats of Love, (for Cancer patients) and 80 ski caps (for the needy) – my fingers don’t do quite as good as they did – and gave them all away – know they will keep some heads warm even if winter is cold…

June is a wonderful example of AgeEsteem for all ages.

At dinner the other evening a friend in his 50’s shared his attraction to the beauty in older women.  He had just seen a woman in her 70’s who he was genuinely drawn to.  He said that she had the same beauty and special sparkle that Audrey Hepburn had.  As a woman of 66 I have to admit that it was refreshing to hear a good looking, intelligent  man admit to being attracted to someone older.

We tend to remember Audrey Hepburn as a young woman on the screen.  She was equally beautiful in her later years and continued to have that special inner glow.  The picture above was taken during her time as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) from 1988 to 1993 when she died.

Audrey Hepburn remains a wonderful AgeEsteem role model.

• She remained active with a purpose,  helping children throughout the world.
• Her joy of living was contagious via her smile, that also smothered her wrinkles.
• She was not afraid to do what she knew to be right.
• She lived her values.

Participants at an AgeEsteem presentation during an international woman’s conference in Africa came from Holland, Serre Leone, Nigeria, USA, Australia, Kenya, New Zealand, Wales, England, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Each shared one role model and the qualities  most admired in the person.  These role models were real people in their lives – people like you and me.

• An aunt who “had no education but taught through example how to have a gentle heart.”
• A friend who “is wise, not afraid to question, and even during difficult moments has time for her friends.  She gives positive feedback on how I can improve.”
• A boss who “is energetic and passionate, and concentrates on balancing a very high pressured professional life and her family.”
• A friend who “cares for herself and is elegant.”
• A colleague who “encourages others and is open, confident, asks questions, and is intelligent, strong and not afraid.”
• A top media personality “who interviews to highlight the good in people, is sincere, ethical and respected so people listen to her.”

No matter how different our cultures may be, many of the same qualities and attributes that we respect flow among our answers.  What any one of these women expressed, I could very well have highlighted in my life.  Probably the same is true for you.

This emphasizes even further that our words and actions carry the power to affect lives for better or worse.  Each day we have the opportunity to softly teach and influence through example.

Having strong AgeEsteem helps us to be natural models of influence.