“Young” Heart in “Old” Body. Experiences of Ageing from Older Persons’ Perspective

Abstract

Age is a social construct that should be analysed as a fexible, contextual category, while old age is subject to coding and interpreting that create different formal and informal concepts of old age. As a micro-social universe, a home for old and infirm persons functions as socio-cultural framework within which, by analysing the experiences of its beneficiaries, we established the existence of four dominant interpretations of old age: fatalist, affirmative, stoical and relativistic. This work is focused on the authentic voices of old persons and personal experiences of old age and ageing. Contextuality and variability (of the feeling) of age, articulately testified by those experiences, show that perceptions of old age and feeling of getting old decisively depend on a personal vision and interpretation of the experience, that need not be compatible with the actual chronological age.