Time on Our Side: Growing in Wisdom, Not Growing Old by Dorothy Rowe (12-Jun-1997) Paperback

by Dorothy Rowe

Everyone fears ageing. Now that life expectancy in the developed world is securely more than three score and ten, fear of imminent death has receded and been replaced by a dread of getting old. While the definition of "old" depends on the age a person has reached - during their 20s people worry about turning 30; during their 30s people worry about turning 40; in their 50s people fear turning 60 and becoming an old-age pensioner. People all share a horror of becoming one of those forgetful, incapacitated, ludicrous figures which parents, aunts and uncles, once so young and vigorous, may have become. What is more, people often let their fear of ageing spoil their present life. Dorothy Rowe has spoken to people aged from five to 95 about how they view ageing, time and death. She has listened to people from societies where the old are revered and respected, as well as people from societies like those in the West - where they are not. She questions the contemptuous attitude to older people - which can often, for example, render invisible intelligent women over 60 - and explores the notion that this very contemptuousness creates the fear of ageing. Rowe looks at ways in which people can change this by altering the view of ageing and the passage of time. Finally, she offers a distillation of wisdom which provides support and hope, and points the reader towards a positive welcoming of the future.

Paperback

About the author

The psychologist who has changed how we understand depression and happiness

"Dorothy Rowes is the calm voice of reason in an increasingly mad world"
Sue Townsend

Dorothy Rowe is a world-renowned psychologist and writer. Her explanation of depression gives the depressed person a way of taking charge of their life and leaving the prison of depression forever.

She shows how we each live in a world of meaning that we have created. She applies this understanding to important aspects of our lives, such as emotional distress, happiness, growing old, religious belief, politics, money, friends and enemies, extraverts and introverts, parents, children and siblings.

Her work liberates us from the bamboozling lies that mental health experts and politicians tell in order to keep us in our place and themselves in power.

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Reviews

[Ms Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dorothy Rowe is so wise and inspiring. She was a hugely influential psychologist whose work suggests that unresolved issues from childhood inform our adult attitudes and she gives practical suggestions to examine these more closely. Many people who suffer as children go on to to suffer psychological difficulties later. This book encourages us to think about how our childhood experiences have shaped our attitudes to ourselves and others and how, as a result, we apply those to our perceptions of getting older.

If children are persistently misunderstood, laughed at, abused, neglected, or their feelings are never taken into account then when they grow up they will hate the old. They may also perpetuate the poor treatment on their own children. Adults like this feel that it's What Children Deserve as they had to go through it. They will also hate and fear the thought of growing old because it was older people who inflicted cruelty on them. In this way it's hard to break free from negative attitudes about ageing.

Dorothy Rowe considers how to grow old wisely: accepting change in a positive way and forming good relationships with ourselves and others. She also has a very good chapter on how we visualise time itself and our relationship with it which I had never considered before.

I have read a number of her books and every one of them has helped me deal with life in a more constructive and understanding way.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dorothy Rowe deserves a much wider readership than she probably gets, I think, but her subjects on the surface seem to be rather specialist and downbeat - anxiety, depression, death, not necessarily in that order. Her books are much bigger in scope than they might seem, however, and tackle the Big Questions of life and living in the twentieth century.
This book isn't one of her best, as far as I was concerned. Ostensibly about growing older and coming to terms with it, the book often veers off down sidetracks that have been better explored in some of her other works. I became rather bored with her views on how the young "hate" the old and vice versa. True or not, I struggled to see the relevance of this broad generalisation.
Still, in the end, Dorothy Rowe's strongpoint is that she tackles difficult subjects head on, has strong opinions and writes with wit and style. You might not agree with her, but I wouldn't like to argue with her either.