I don't think that 40 is old. I don't think that 50 is old. I don't even think 60 is old though your getting there by then I suppose, but I wonder if I will feel the same way when I am 60.
I work with a group of people in their late 40's and in their 50's who, one and all, describe themselves as old. Interestingly, the man I work with who is 60 does not describe himself as old and is in better health than all of them. Before you start thinking that there may be a correlation between how well he feels and his feelings about aging, I also work with people younger than he is who think that they are old and they are quite healthy.
I find it...oh what do I find it. Offensive? No, that's not quite right. Do I feel disdainful? Actually, I do feel a little disdainful. Do I feel disgusted? Not really, I think I feel shocked, confused, and a little disappointed. Disappointed because I am probably going to be working with these people for a while and I find this attitude to be a real downer.
There is a woman the same age as me who constantly refers to how we're old now. Excuse me? Maybe you are, I'm not. (I don't say that.) A lot of the people who I work with have health and dietary habits guarenteed to send one to an early grave and constantly talk about their health problems as though they are just an inevitable part of aging. AND THEY AREN'T EVEN THAT OLD!
The other day, I heard a woman say to another woman that she really wasn't familiar with 80's music. She said "I went through that stage where you listen to music in the 70's" That stage where you listen to music? Listening to music, a stage? Huh?
Younger people are always afraid of getting older and who can blame them with these examples of 'graceful aging'. To think that you are going to have terrible health problems and be hobbling around complaining about your feet and that you will no longer listen to music because it is a juvenile activity, doesn't make one look forward to growing older.
Naturally, one will have more problems due to the normal wear and tear of age. It's at this age that congenital anomolies may make their presence known or that genetic predispositions may start causing health problems. But most of us can prevent having serious health problems by taking care of ourselves.
I have found that comments like the ones I mentioned above are beginning to be a pet peeve of mine. Firstly, because I don't agree with them but hey, people can agree to disagree. No foul. But because it is so negative. It perpetuates a negative stereotype and makes you complicit with an attitude that is damaging to a large segment of the population in which you are included, if not now, then eventually.
I heard a radio show once that spoke about age discrimination and the gentleman pointed out that aging is unavoidable. Living in a society that has such negative stereotypes about aging causes low self-esteem. It is to everyones benefit to confront these stereotypes, especially if you are young now because things will be better for you when you are older if you do.
The idea that common phrases illustrate attitudes and form them at the same time is interesting to me. An example of this would be the phrase 'my generation.' This phrase is commonly used to mean the late teens through 20's and maybe early 30's. It seems to mean the time when you are young. It seems to imply that only during this time are you entirely revelant and once 'your generation' has been replaced by the new one, you are not really as important. You are consigned, as a woman, to the ranks of soccer mom. Pooh! What is wrong with loving your kids and being a mom. What does that say about our society that we lump and entire group of our population into a one-dimensional phrase that we say with a sneer on our faces. It says more about our society than it does the women that they are referring to.
At any rate, this is my generation. As long as I am alive, this is my generation. It was my generation when I was in preschool and it will be my generation up until the day I die. I will not become less relevant, nor do I believe that I will lose touch or lose my edge. I don't believe that we have to. But it's something that we have to fight because all of society seems hell-bent on putting someone who is not a 'youngster' anymore into this slot.
Fight! Fight! Fight! I have never lost my teenage rebellion and it will hold me in good stead. Don't worry, I have learned to rebel with a little more finesse. (Rebellion is another thing, by the way. Why is it always considered more adult to mold yourself to the situation around you, to stop fighting and accept things that you know are wrong.) Our poor children.
26 comments:
You are on the tail end of the baby-boomers, right? That generation is disproportionately large, so by the time you are in your 60s and 70s you can probably expect even more negative stereotypes.
(You guys are gonna make it real difficult for us younger-types when you start retiring and sucking up tons of money through pensions. And you'll probably dislike us youngsters for not paying enough much attention to you guys, also.)
Yeah Trevor. I wonder what will happen. Maybe me and my husband will just go and move to Mexico. I suppose the stereotypes could go either way. We are such a huge buying sector so this is affecting consumerism. At leas Wall street might respect us. In the US, the AARP (American Association of Retired People) is a big group with lots of political influence as well.
At any rate, it sounds like they don't want to let us retire. They keep pushing up the retirement age. I guess they are hoping to work us to death until we retire. I have a difficult time imagining doing the job that I am doing mpw when I am 70, healthy or not.
Boy.
I KNOW what a privilege it is to GET to grow older. By all rights I ought not be here.
I make remarks about getting 'old'--heck, I make 'those' noises when I get up off the floor nowadays....LOL....but there's amazement and awe that I get to be here.
Himself has a different perspective on 'being old' though he jokes about it, it's based out of fear.
A bit a little kid whistling in the dark, yaknow?
His mortality is starting to be reckoned with. He'd getting to deal with limitations he didn't experience before.
It's a part of the process, I think. Or at least a part of his.
So I go easy with him because his path hasn't brought him to dealing with this before.
Makes me wonder how many of those other folks are just more little kids whistling in the dark........
Negative stereotypes of Baby Boomers?
The youth culture thing is really an involved thing, and a lot of it I think is driven by marketing these days. The 60s counterculture was due in large part to political situations, challenges to older notions of race, ethnicity and gender, but most importantly by economic affluence on the part of that generation and more extensive education. In other words, this was a culture of its own. The mold.
When major-league marketers interceded in the counterculture, they envisioned it only as a youth culture, and that the basics of what made it tick would apply to subsequent generations. In some ways, it has. In other ways, it's failing on industry-wide scales.
Part of industrial attention to the youth demographic drives commercial culture, where we place ourselves vicariously. Without that representation, we can often feel irrelevant.
Thanks for the generous compliment and encouragment that I felt from it. My writing has gotten pretty good through lots of practice :), and maybe I should look at doing a few short stories, or an off-the-wall-essay, or something.
My friends and I, oddly enough, felt like we were between gen x and whatever generation lable that came after it (gen y?). But maybe that was part of the gen x mentality, not wanting to be part of our own existence, but above it all in the clouds. We can't even see our feet stepping in shit, expecting too much from our hard-working baby boomer parents. We hear people talk about fixing social security, we all look around at each other not seeing a thing, say "great! Somebody fix it" or something similar and effortless, then we don't even show out to vote because we still want to make sure that we get tickets to the familly values tour or go snowboarding for a thirtyX birthday party, ignoring the broken ankle suffered three years prior. Insurance pays for that, time off and exteded vaction.
And who'd we learn it from?
Boom!
How's that for stereotyping? Every gen is going to get knocked--might as well fire the cannon at my own ranks.
Im all of 22 and kind of old - if you judge by the colour of my hair, or by the model of my glasses (hair, because Id rather be seen dead than with dyed hair, and glasses because, well, specs for me are rough use! i sleep with them)... but it ends there... and thatll be the only signs of me aging for the next 60 years...hehe
Mel-I can see how coming close to death might change your attitude. I think it's neat to accept age gracefully as well.
I'm not reallly sure that I am not accepting it gracefully, I think that I am redefining it. I don't believe that there should be only a small part of your life that you feel relevant and then that the rest of it you should feel irrelevant. I think that this attitude is perpetuated by too manypeople. I think it is in a large part perpetuated by people who are not young in more as well and the whole thing makes younger people so afraid of getting older. They say that we are afraid of getting older because we are afraid of death and of course that is there, but I think that we are afraid of the irrelevancy and the idea that our 'fun' is over. If other people want to treat us that way, fine. Most people who know me usually quit treating me that way once they know a little bit about me anyway, but I don't think that we should treat ourselves that way.
x-I think that I understand what you are saying. That some of this is a contrived thing? That the commercial culture can make us feel more relevant than we actually are?
Luckily, I don't watch much TV but I'm sure it all affects us subliminally. It affects everyone subliminally. However, I believe that even if commercials etc...seem to make us irrelevant that we are anything but relevant politically. And we will be very relevant politically for quite a while. I suppose that is another reason why I bristle so much at the attitudes that I see around me. Because it affects us so much politically and so mnany policies go against my politics.
I'm older, but I'm definitely not old school.
X-I'm sure that me living in the midwest influences many of my opinions too. I'm sure that if I were in an area where people were more urban? Sophisticated? Not sure what the word I'm looking for is, I would see a difference in peoples attitudes.
Eric-I meant every word of the complements as well.
that is interesting that you see your generation that way. The articles that I have seen that describe generation x talk a lob about how they are not as materialistic and more apt to join the peace corps or somthing. I do see more people like that from your age-group than I do mine. You think that your age-groups attitude is affected because you didn't have to work for what you have?
Well maybe but there is another way that you can look at it. You've heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs haven't you? At the bottom is survival. If you don't have enough to eat, no place to rest, no-one to take care of you when you are sick, you will not be able to move up to the next level until these needs are taken care of. The next level is security etc...with the top level being self-actualization.
The generation who grew up during the depression for instance, who were not getting their basic needs for survival and security, are going to view that world very differently than a generation that grew up in relative affluence. Worrying about your survival would not be something that one would easily forget I am assuming so this would very directly affect their political attitudes.
Many of the kids that you see now, they are in societies stage of self-actualization. This is both good and bad. good or bad depending on how 'selfish' the person is I suppose. The ones who are not selfish have the ability to affect society in a very positive way.
Affluent people are always accused of being selfish, but most of the ones I've known have actually been generous if the affluence has been in the family for awhile.
Oh, and I would be very interesting in seeing more of your prose.
Ab-I expect that as young as you are, Trevor as well, that you wouldn't relate much with this post. I think it's very cool when someone has enough self-esteem to not dye their hair.
Eric-I just saw your comment on the last post. Having children does not make it easy to write that's for sure. I feel jealous of people who have the time for all of this. If I had the time, I could see myself spending all my spare time doing it.
I think it's great when you know what you want and what you don't want. Many people of course, change their feelings if they actually have a child but I think that it's a good thing if you know that you don't want children, not to have them. they definitely take up all your time. Which I suppose goes back to my post and the losing your edge part.
I have a female friend who is a knockout and pushing 40 and thinks of herself as old. She looks better than a lot of women half her age!! It's a mindset for sure. I never knew listening to music was a stage. Maybe keeping up with teeny bopper bands is something you outgrow but music in general should not be a stage. I guess it would be rather annoying to have everyone complaining that they are old.
Life is a hard slog for some, and for others- they just breeze through the stages (we have to admit there are stages) with little or no difficulty.
Is age a state of mind like some say pain is; when suddenly the "master" punches you hard in the nose bringing stinging tears in your eyes. Ooouch!!
There is no recipe for life/age-ing. I think it is all relative, and then comes death and dying: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - the stages- denial, anger, bartering, depression, and last hopefully acceptance. A bit like age-ing; naturally embroidering the aforementioned with the myriad individual scenarios that bring a person from one to the other and back again till the final .... peace in this world, to find comfort in your own skin.
Absolutely great post.
Y;-) Paddy
as the great john mellencamp said:
growing up leads to growing old and then to dying,
And dying to me dont sound like all that much fun
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
I've come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins
he's a young at heart kinda guy i think.
my wife and i have a cd of the month club where every month i buy her a cd by someone she's never heard of, switching genres as we go. it staves off her frightening vision of us, a hundred years old in the retirement home, listening to tracy chapman.
and, according to paul simon, 'every generation throws another hero up the pop charts.'
Paddy-You bring up a good point. Some people age early because their lives have been so hard. And I suppose that when we are young sometimes we rely on our youth and as it leaves and we can't rely on it, we begin finding out more about who we are, which isn't a bad thing.
Benji-Well, I'm glad that someone else has the same thoughts as me. I hate to think that I would ever become completely obsolete.
TV still affects us greatly, even if we don't watch it, for it affects those around us who do.
I know what you mean about Maslow's Hierarchy
I can't even meet basic requirements. Now my car blew up. I'm all of a sudden going nowhere. It really is killing me.
i saw a documentary that said the life expectancy in zimbabwe was 35. so, in that country/culture ... to 20 year-olds start calling themselves old, i wonder? haha just being sort of flip.
i don't get it when 40 somethings refer to themselves as old. its such crap. i looked after a 95 year man who had a ruptured appendix ... had the surgery ... survived it and went home to live on his own! so ... as you have alluded to, one really is only as old as one thinks oneself.
i think the fact that we treat aging as a sort of negative ~ like some disease that screams for a cure - instead of some natural part of living ... i think this sparks a lot of the ageist type stuff in our culture.
here's somethin fer ya: we start to die as soon as we're born. that's when we start ageing.
have a good weekend.
:)
Treating it like it's a disease, that's perfect. Another thing that I think is wierd is when youth is put forward as the only example of attractiveness. Sophia Loren was one of the most beautiful women and she didn't look young. I wish that people were more open-minded.
I totally get this one. I need to read your preceding post. I also don't know how I can ever afford to retire.
Oh, I wish you would read the previous one. I would be interested in your input. I'm afraid of retirement either. I hope one of my kids becomes a multi-millionare. I'm banking on my son right now.
Great entry, and good writing as always. Most of my family lives into their nineties, and are pretty strong, together and healthy even then, so 60 doesn't seem old at all. I think you're right on, being old is a state of mind. I still feel like I connect more with my students than the faculty I work with, with some exceptions. I plan on being young for a while, and got back into taekwondo this summer.
john mellencamp again:
just because i'm middle aged that don't mean
i wanna sit around this house and watch tv
i wanna live my life close to the bone
i want the real life
i wanna live the real life
now that i have concluded you're mentally unstable, do you also go through really bad mood swings?
Do your interests and decisions readily change?
please don't be mad. Women are always in a bad mood for some reason.
you are absolutely right
and I'm 17 and staying there - the good thing about this is that I can now borrow my teenage daughters' clothes because we're all roughly the same age now.
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