I am an old woman. People are not very comfortable with the idea of oldness. They try to dismiss it. “You’re not old. You don’t look old. 80 is the new old. You’re too alive to be old…” This is their stuff their avoidance of a journey I am taking into the latter part of my own life. A journey we all get to take if we live long enough.
The question of how to use this time of how to live as an older person is the important one to me. How do I make this final period before I die a time of contributing? I am aware of moving into tribal eldership. It is a label people are starting to give me. This feels deeply important. To make the journey into old age a journey of wisdom and value to my people.
It was fashionable a decade or so ago to think that if you did enough positive affirmations you would live forever. I think people have moved on from there. Thank goodness.
Our culture is struggling to know how to relate to its elders. Little surprise.
It is not much more than a few generations when few people lived to be very old. We are very successful at helping more and more people live long lives. Our whole demographic profile has changed from one where most people were young to one where the balance in numbers at all ages is fairly flat.
The people who used to survive to old age could reasonably be regarded as having wisdom and survival experience.There was good reason to respect elders.
Neurologists are now showing that our brains and ways of thinking develop into old age. We’re afraid of getting Alzheimers but we pay little attention to the wonder of being in the wisdom years when our minds understand and bring so much experience and knowing together so apparently effortlessly.
The sheer numbers of older people now is regarded as a demographic problem for social planners. The pension was introduced in a generation when the majority of people were dead within a few years of stopping work. Not now. But some of the arguments are little more than attempts to argue for high rates of immigration of young skilled workers rather than funding the cost of educating our own young for the jobs.
It is the case though that we choose how we live our life. The sum of our life choices results in who we are as an old person what type of person we are. Being old no longer means that we learned much along the way or that we are wise. Now it can merely mean that we have been well looked after by a generous social and healthcare system. Being old doesn’t necessarily mean that we are making the special contribution that the elderly can make to our community. It can easily mean that we are simply enjoying the benefits.
A term we hear now is intergenerational equity. Will we leave the world better or worse for our having been here? Will we leave the world depleted by having taken more than our share? Will there be enough for the generations that follow?
I feel angry when I hear older people talking about spending the kids inheritance. If all we can find to do with our old age is to spend extravagently I really wonder why we are here.
One of the wonders of old age is the sense of being wealthy in the riches of family community and simple needs. The freedom from the daily commute the immense demands of raising a family the competition of the young allows us a time when our needs are very little very easily satisfied. When we simply don’t need more.
How are the older people in this community living? What is our special role to play to give back to this community? How are we to live as old people?