Orazio Licciardello

Journey Through "Fields" of Ageing: Perceptions, Experiences and Representations in Different Environmental Contexts, in Italy and Spain Orazio Licciardello

Growing older as a stage of the long journey of life: last but not least. Growing older represents a journey because in itself it has all of the peculiarities of a journey: choice, beginning, route. Hence, the background idea did not concern a story about the end, but the ?narration? of a journey, a new journey into the longer one of life. Many elderly people, both individually and culturally diverse who we met during my study route, are those who gave sense and meaning to our journey and shaped it. It is likely the journey as metaphor of life represents a ?archetype?, at least in Western culture, but, at the same time, there is a different journey for any life as well as a different ageing process for any elderly person. We focused on ageing neither as a destination nor as waiting for ? passing away, but as a whispered promise of a new beginning, a sort of discovery of a new land.