Play her Paranoid!
- Blog
Warning: this article is subjective, one-sided and poorly argued. When a person turns sixty, she does not mystically turn into an elderly person overnight. She does not immediately start planning for her retirement or funeral, nor does she swap her high heels for a pair of Aino slippers. For her, life is still an adventure.
A sixty-year-old joins a diving course or learns how to code. She will at least start studying a new language – and she may even learn it.
A sixty-year-old already used computers when people still talked about floppy discs and autoexec.bat, and the word processing programme was called Teko. She is completely digitised: she buys her shoes online, communicates with her children on WhatsApp and with the authorities via Suomi.fi Messages. Naturally, she reads her newspaper in digital format.
You should not be confined to the professional skills you have once acquired
A sixty-year-old is not past her sell by date yet, not even in the world of work. Her perception of work and life in general matters more than her age. It is important for all of us not to be confined to the professional skills we have once acquired, but to be prepared to learn something new and think differently.
A sixty-year old knows – and dares to admit – that she doesn't know all that much. She has patience to listen to the others and learn. She understands that the cross-pollination of different people, views and skills usually leads to better results than strictly limited expertise. A sixty-year-old has had her fingers in so many pies that she has perspective and experience. For that reason, she is able to question things when necessary.
Only tango and social dances after your sixtieth birthday?
Many sixty-year-olds are in excellent physical condition. The number of years does not matter: what matters is how you have spent them. A couch potato cannot reach good results in a Cooper’s test even as a forty-something. A sixty-year-old can squat and do planks just like younger folk. However, a sixty-year-old does not necessarily enjoy revelling at a company party until the early hours. It doesn't mean that she is a sissy. She has simply enjoyed quite a few parties throughout the decades already.
And no, a sixty-year-old doesn't suddenly start listening to tango and Finnish humppa music if she never used to before. Her bluetooth headphones play the best playlists on Spotify and the most interesting new beats. Well, of course, she also still listens to the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath. In the words of Juho Juntunen: “Play her ‘Paranoid’!” It is, after all, her birthday today.
Merja Heinonen
Senior Specialist, KEHA-Centre / Job Market