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Children are our future

Yesterday we visited Pahalgam, a beautiful village, the site of a former hill station, nestling amongst the Himalayan foothills at 7,200ft.  It was about a 3 hour bumpy ride from Srinagar on a wonderfully clear autumn day.  On the way there we passed many families in their valley fields threshing their wheat crop in the traditional way by bashing it across a large boulder and collecting the grain on a tarpaulin, upon which it will be spread out to dry in the sun.  This is an ages old practice and whole families were involved, from the very young to the very old.  It’s the last harvest to come in, the rice and saffron having already been collected. 

Here in Kashmir the majority of the population have no pension to look forward to when they reach a retirement age, if they even live that long, with the continuing military and political trouble, accompanied by poor health and sanitation.  So they are still out working in the fields whatever their age.  Their security for their old age is their children and grandchildren.  The family culture is very strong on the Indian subcontinent and literally as in Sting’s song “children are our future, teach them well”.  Your expectation is that if you become unable to look after yourself your children will welcome you into their home and care for you.  There are no old people’s homes up in the wild hills.

Just for a moment now imagine that you have no pension, no inkling of what a retirement plan is, no opportunity to ever stop “working” – whatever that means to you, no vision of life being different after a certain randomly picked age.  Imagine that life just goes on until the end, pretty much the same every day, changing gradually with the seasons.  How does that feel?  How does it make you think about your future differently?  What other options does it help you to think about?  What would you do differently if this was how your life was?  What will you do differently tomorrow as a result of this reflection?

Keep Learning

A study in Finland, reported in today's Times of India, has linked learning with protection from Alzheimer's disease.  This really backs up a lot of the work that we do in our Fresh Steps programme with some hard evidence.  We already know that as we get older we are into a use it or lose it situation in relation to "the little grey cells" so extra cerebral exercise is a great insurance policy.  We now know from this study reported in the learned journal Neurology that the risk of Alzheimer's correlates inversely with the years of education that you have experienced.  Basically what they are saying, having studied 1400 people over 20 years, is that the longer you have been in education, the less your risk of Alzheimer's.

Now you could sit back and say that it's too late now to do anything, my education is over.  That would be fatalistic and definitely very un-Fresh Stepish!  Or you could choose to say "Wow what great news!  That just spurs me on to find out about that evening course/sign up for that training course at work/enquire about study leave/buy that new teach yourself electronics textbook/go back to my French class/learn some new Salsa steps" (delete as appropriate).  That would be a much more positive response, to keep topping up that insurance policy constantly with new education and learning.

It's invigorating, stretches your mind, gives you added confidence and is of course fun (and we all need more fun as we get older!).  So what are you waiting for, make that phone call, send that email or fill  that application form in TODAY!  The longer you leave it the closer you are getting to your brain frying itself.