Eileen Kramer is reinventing aging. The 102-year-old dancer and artist is working on a new ballet and plans to perform it in November — with a walking stick, if necessary.
“I aim to be walking properly because there is nothing wrong with me except my balance,” she said.
Kramer is one of a growing number of older Australians who have decided to do aging differently, busting through the stereotypes that say that people retire, apply for a pension, downsize to an apartment, then move to a retirement village to play cards and then shuffle off to a nursing home to quietly die.
Instead, we are seeing more older people switch to new careers in their 60s, become entrepreneurs, throw themselves into creative endeavors, chase adventure in travel and investigate new forms of communal living, where they remain in charge and avoid the humiliation of the institutional 5:30pm dinners of soft foods and cordial.
Kramer is the ambassador for the non-profit Arts Health Institute and has a 75-year international career that, most recently, included a role in the Belvoir production of the Wizard of Oz; appearances in music videos and a collaboration on a fashion project.
“Always make the opportunity for yourself or else grasp the opportunity,” Kramer told a forum in Sydney on confronting ageism.
When asked if she believes herself to be old, Kramer said: “I don’t use the word ‘old.’ I say I have been on the planet a long time. If you are doing creative work, you are absolutely ageless. There is no such thing as age in creativity. It is always something new.”
Institute chief executive Maggie Haertsch said creativity has beneficial effects on health and quality of life in older people.
“Arts play a really significant role in building a person’s quality of life. I think that ability to keep learning and learning something new should never be underestimated, no matter what your capability is,” she told the forum.
A study of 60,000 older people by National Taiwan University found that those who took part in a creative — performance and art — program had lower rates of loneliness and depression, higher morale and improved hand dexterity.
There are 3.57 million people aged 65 and over in Australia and, by 2056, they might comprise about a quarter of the population.
While the numbers create a powerful bloc, that has not yet resulted in an opening up of the employment market for mature-aged workers or the retreat of ageism.
It takes an average of 68 weeks for someone aged over 55 to find a job.
The lack of employment options could be one reason that 34 percent of young firms in Australia are led by senior entrepreneurs (55 to 64 years), which is a higher activity rate than average.
Cofounders of the profit-for-purpose consultancy The Ageing Revolution, Leonie Sanderson and Simon Lowe, have found that it is not only young people who hold unhelpful and untrue views about their elders.
The couple took a three-month fact-finding trip last year, interviewing “grey nomads” and mature-aged people around Australia and discovered that many people were discriminating against their own age group.
“We are all hopefully going to grow old so why are we prejudicing our future lives?” Sanderson asked.
“The negative beliefs about aging are all around us. Even things like birthday cards have terms like ‘over the hill,’ ‘one foot in the grave’ or ‘God’s waiting room,’” she said.
“There are even beauty regimens to combat aging from when you are in your 20s, hair dye to cover up your grey hair. It is like we are trying to erase any talk or discussion of aging in our society at all, instead of focusing on the opportunities that come with growing older,” Sanderson said. “The discrepancy between these beliefs and how older people actually are is the most amazing thing.”
On their road trip, Sanderson and Lowe had no shortage of grey nomads to interview. There are about 80,000 on the roads in Australia at any one time.
The Ageing Revolution aims to work with companies and start-ups to codesign and develop ideas and products, such as an app to help carers, Lowe said.
Haertsch said the process of internalizing ageism starts before people even hit middle age.
“There comes a point in your life where you are somewhat ashamed, or embarrassed, or insecure about talking about your age. I hazard a guess it might be around the age of 30,” she said. “What happens is this internalized ageism is incredibly serious, because it also plays out in areas where we do our work — which is in aged care and, particularly, residential aged care,” Haertsch said.
“We find that some of the self-limiting age beliefs actually stop people flourishing. People don’t realize that they keep learning. Even if you have some form of cognitive impairment, such as dementia, you can keep learning,” she added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day