What do your music choices say about you?

A quick personal anecdote. A good friend of mine is in his twenties and I shared some of my music recently. His reaction: this is OLD music!

Instinctively I got rather defensive. No, I said, it's not 'old' music it's simply great quality music. It just happens to come from a few years back, that's all. Only later did I recognise my own 'old brain' thinking. Yes, I love all the music on my iphone and yes it is all high quality to my ears. BUT. Most of it dates from the last century.

So, what do my musical choices reveal? Is it possible that no quality music has been released over the last decade? Rather unlikely. The hard lesson is that my choices said something rather hurtful about me: I'd somehow closed down, stopped being open to new influences, preferred to live in a nostalgic past than head for tomorrow's world.

So, now my earphones are buzzing to lots of great new stuff: it was out there all the time - I just had to be 'young brained' enough to be receptive.

Stay young or face discrimination

A few years ago, who'd heard of the term 'ageism'? Sexism, yes; racism, of course. But ageism?

Today we hear the term more and more. In fact, in Britain people claiming discrimination at work because of their age more than tripled from 2006-2007!

So what is happening?

Like it or not, society increasingly demands that we stay young. Signs of ageing can quickly result in our being excluded - with the only recourse being to defend ourselves in the courtroom.

Actress Dame Joan Bakewell claimed that the media is dominated by the young. Meanwhile the business world is particularly unforgiving - especially in Britain.

"In America, there are women with white hair who are heads of banks, heads of corporations. Where are those women [in Britain]?" (Anna Ford, BBC)

We owe it to ourselves to stay Young Brained - and avoid falling victim to those who, rightly or wrongly, will judge our suitability according to ageist criteria.