You’re never too old to become a better you

Here’s what I think of old age. I reject it. I reject the befuddling poison of time, working like some neurotoxin binding your brain and numbing your nervous

system.

I reject the gentle hiss as we empty out of joy and energy and general substance. I reject the dimming of our mental lamp and our emotional fires. I reject the loss of innocence. I reject the implosion of dreams. I reject cynicism in the void. Yes, I know we all die. Until then we’re all young souls.

Now, the last thing I want to do is become a selfproclaimed advocate for the older person. Because, you know, I’m not old, thank God. But I’d like to become an advocate for people who haven’t yet had the chance to make life-changing educational decisions in their mid to late adulthood. People like me, before the start of this year.

As someone in their 40s, I hoped when I chucked in my job to start learning te reo Ma¯ ori fulltime that it wasn’t too late to begin intensive learning again. I wondered if there was an age when it was too late to properly learn a language. Would I be left behind? Do we peak, then taper off, turn into intellectual ghosts?

Getting old in Pa¯ keha¯ culture is generally perceived as something to be avoided. Life in this world is like the slow unravelling of a sweater. But really, it’s not like that at all. Life is the gradual composition of a vast, breathtaking, endless, staggering, vividly detailed portrait of a sweater.

Now that I’m well into the course, I’ve discovered, much to my relief, that I’m as dumb as I was in my 20s, and no dumber.

This is my message of empowerment. Maybe you can’t learn to play the trumpet now. That’s probably because you never had musical talent. You can’t be the new Lorde, but you never could, even back when you didn’t need blood thinners.

Maybe you can’t become a surgeon now. But that’s because you always had the manual dexterity of a cheese wheel.

Age doesn’t change that. Nothing can – except not being you, and my belief is that we shouldn’t be anyone else. Just slightly better versions of ourselves.

So to those considering learning te reo Ma¯ ori who worry about their age – don’t.

It is never too late. In fact, I think it takes on more importance, and more significance, and more satisfaction as we get older.

I won’t lie – learning a new language is tough, filled with random leaps forward and sudden roadblocks. You face the agony of misunderstanding, of disconnection, of separation, of embarrassment, of publicly acknowledging that you can’t speak a simple sentence.

But these are the growing pains of learning a new language for everybody, not just older people. And besides, the shame of fleeting ignorance is nothing compared to the shame I felt at the thought of permanent ignorance of my language and culture. It felt like a kind of death.

We all want to think we are the hero in our own story. Sometimes we’re just a bunch of faces in the background. But to grasp this language is to take back the central role in your life and your culture and your history. You cannot be too old to be you.

Anyway, secondly, in the beginning I wondered why I should do it. What was the point? The future of te reo Ma¯ ori and te ao Ma¯ ori belongs to kids who speak the language and live the culture better than the likes of me.

I wondered if there was an age when it was too late to properly learn a language. Would I be left behind?

The answer I tell myself most days is that I’m still capable of doing it, so I will, and I will fully understand why afterwards. It might not be entirely logical, but neither

is life.

Besides, thanks to the teachers and my fellow students – and my general sense of being alive again – I have actually started understanding why it might be important to stand up and take my place in a world that runs, with my whakapapa, into the past, not just into the future.

After all, life, ageing, death, wha¯ nau, whakapapa – these all seem to be treated differently in te ao Ma¯ ori. For starters, there is a genuine respect accorded to those who are older. If I’m honest, sometimes I don’t want respect. I’d rather be younger. I still have some work to do on decolonisation.

Anyway, I might start with the idea that rejecting old age is not about being younger. We should just be satisfied being as passionately lousy as we always were and work from there.