Keep your years open

You don't need to think wistfully about time gone by as you age. Each new decade brings with it fun firsts, new milestones

- SEEMA GOSWAMI

There are many dispiriting things about getting older. Your joints creak, your brain slows, your eyesight weakens, your hair thins, your waist thickens. But what I find most dispiriting of all is how there are so few firsts in your life after you hit your forties and fifties.

When you are young, life is an endless series of firsts. Babies grow their first tooth, eat their first solid food, take their first step, and say their first word. As they grow older, they have their first day at playschool, then at kindergarten, and then in proper school, followed, in good time, by their first day in college. As teenagers they have their first crush, their first date, their first kiss, their first big love, and their first heartbreak.