The narrative complexity of successful ageing

The purpose of this paper is to argue for an archaeological expedition of sorts, to search for and to uncover a host of stories which might assist us in piecing together a framework worth dedicating our future lives to understanding ageing.

This is a theoretical paper on ageing.

An individual's experience of ageing is integrally bound to questions of culture – particularly the systems of meaning within culture – and context. Just as there is not “one true story of aging”, so the paper suggests that we must have multiple narratives to assist us in building our own models of successful ageing.

Narratives of successful ageing, like all narratives, are never told in a vacuum. Rather, there must be those who are able to hear them, often stretching themselves beyond their own experiences, even beyond their own cultural frameworks. This has strong implications for researchers of successful ageing: together, we must try to meet the challenge of listening to diversity.