The wisdom of maturity
If you want to learn gardening, archery, mathematics or a host of other subjects, the university of the third age could help keep the grey matter alive
‘Those who teach shall also learn
And those who learn shall also teach’
Peter Laslett, Founder of U3A
I have always found talk about ‘keeping the mind active’ patronising; older people don’t suddenly wander off and become dottled, dozy, snow-heads, regaling everyone with repetitive tales about their past life. It’s not really the past that’s ‘another country’, but it is the future that is feared as the years roll by, making it seem that everyone does indeed do things differently there. In the UK, 600,000 in a million men and women are expected to now make it to their 75th birthday doesn’t mean that time’s winged chariot has suddenly gone out of service, it just means it has moved a decade or two.
We can’t ever really halt the ageing process, the inevitable physical decay, nor those accompanying ‘senior’ moments, but we can try and help those still green shoots of the mind keep on sprouting.
Many fearless, 50 plus, retirees are now as interested as they always have been in knowing and learning, and now free from the burdens of work and family are able to do so. Now their time has come, because they have both the time and the belief that it’s vitally important to make the best of life.
To help achieve their goals and provide a whole new world of learning, Cyprus now welcomes the University of the Third Age (U3A). This organisation is not a university in the strict sense of the word: there are no examinations, no certificates or degrees given. U3A is all about capturing and developing further the wisdom of maturity, acting as it does purely as a platform for individuals to get together and organise themselves for the purpose of learning and or teaching new skills.
Behind the Cyprus branch is Janet Bureau, a woman whose sheer enthusiasm and commitment to the aims of U3A have resulted in the creation of active branches in Limassol, Paphos and Larnaca.
“I believe, after living here for a year or so, many retirees feel, as I did, that their brain was starting to turn to jelly – they get into a set routine, which is more social, the temptation to just ‘do nothing’ is great for a short period of time but, in the long term, it’s incredibly damaging and also makes for a certain amount of isolation.
“I had already had some experience with U3A and as it’s one of the fastest growing organisations in Europe, pulling in thousands of men and women who feel they still want to have that rush of satisfaction and sense of achievement that comes from learning a new skill.
“Each district has course co-coordinators – volunteers who set up different courses and find the right people to be group leader and teach each subject. There’s a wonderful element of medieval bartering at work here: if one person teaches archeology, for example, then wishes to learn how to bake bread it may be that the baker is already in that person’s group so they barter their talents. It’s all about courses being mutually beneficial and wholly interactive, and not elitist in any way, I feel that’s very important to stress.”
Janet went on to describe just a few of the courses available to those in search of new challenges. “We have archery classes, a book group, computing for beginners, dinghy sailing, geology, golf tuition, jazz appreciation, discussion groups on philosophy, music appreciation, history, how to master board games, even a class on mathematics and problem solving and these groups are being added to all the time.”
One of the great things about living in Cyprus is the presence of an enormous expat talent bank, and, just because one has reached a certain age doesn’t mean these skills should go to waste. We have in our midst men and women who have worked in engineering, politics, banking, newspapers, medicine, law, we harbour historians, plumbers, chefs, water diviners, jockeys, football coaches… the list goes on. All of these could make a difference to other people’s lives by giving a small amount of time to pass on their accumulated knowledge.
It’s always a mistake to pretend we are young but if knowledge is indeed power then the older we get the more we will need.
U3A
Janet Bureau Tel 25 934506, www.u3acyprus.org/
