is a journalist and a graduate from Sciences Po in Paris. Se has worked for the French magazine Les Inrocks and is particularly interested in boating and the world of work.
Picture © Author’s personal collection
IN BRIEF
Perennials are people who refuse to be classified by age.
WHAT ELSE?
The word also describes a type of plant which can survive several years. In 2016, American entrepreneur Gina Pell used it to describe people who share a similar mentality: creative, curious, open-minded, always evolving, and keen on new technologies.
Although anyone can describe themselves as a “perennial”, the word primarily applies to seniors who feel a lot younger than their age. That said, this is the case for most of them, as revealed by an American survey among 500,000 people aged 10 to 89: from the age of 50 onwards, most responders said they felt 10 years younger than their biological age. There are several reasons for this. First, the lengthening of life expectancy: unlike their parents and grand-parents at the same age, they still have many years ahead of them, and intend to live them to the full.
EXAMPLE?
Marie is 50 years old, changed career paths fifteen years ago, when she shifted from marketing in the luxury brand sector to project management for an NGO. As she continues to go on humanitarian missions abroad, she also dreams of becoming a “slasher”, by accumulating her NGO work with another job as a graphic designer. So she’s following an online course to become a freelance graphic designer, all the while preparing her next backpacking trip to the mountains, to let off steam.
WHAT ELSE?
If classifying generations as X, Y, or Z (as many HR departments do) can be tiresome, describing yourself as a perennial can be even more misguided, because what’s valued among such people are qualities typically associated with youth. Their claim to do away with the concept of generations could therefore conceal another form of ageism.
Or “juvenescence”, as writer Robert Harrison calls it in his book in Juvenescence: A Cultural History of our Age (2014). In the US, in the post-war period, he describes a general biocultural evolution which has made entire groups more youthful in their appearance, mentality, lifestyle, and, above all, their aspirations.
This is hardly surprising, given the unappealing image of maturity in Western modernity – a carefully constructed image to which no-one in their right mind would aspire, as moral philosopher Susan Neiman explains in her 2014 book Why Grow Up?. With age come responsibilities, including that of deciding what kind of legacy we want to leave behind, and how. The search for eternal youth could make young people historical orphans, rather than heirs, Harrison warns. To prepare for the future, young people and seniors should aspire to culturally gain in age, Neiman argues; because we cannot change society if there aren’t enough responsible adults.
IN PRACTICE?
No-one should be reduced to their generational archetype, and this is the main lesson we can draw from the concept of “perennial”. But could there not be a less caricatural way of rejecting clichés about senior citizens? And what if real perennials were merely adults? That is to say, people with ideals, beliefs, and enough experience and perspective to put them into action. This shouldn’t be an off-putting prospect, especially when surveys suggest – namely the one cited by Neiman in her book – that people are more and more unhappy until they reach maturity, a turning point that occurs around the age of 46.
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