Getting older. We all know what that means as each new year approaches or overtakes our allotted span. More depressingly, last week has just been crossed off the four thousand or so most of us statistically should live. We are getting older, sure enough, but for the postwar Boomer generation, we just aren’t feeling older. That’s a good thing, right? Yes and, maybe, no.
Hopefully it enables us to live fuller and more rewarding lives as our 80s become the perfect time to learn a new language, take up yoga, write a symphony or (why not?) to find love. It’s almost as if we are in denial of the biological imperative, those standard metrics of ageing that predict lessening mobility, reduced cognitive function, declining senses and awareness of the world around us. Few of us in this age group, given reasonable health and a good hand in the genetic card game, now accept this as our future. But do we also acknowledge the pressures that this will bring? Just like teenagers the elderly must now confront aspirational role models to make us question our achievements. In old age our forebears used to vegetate a little. But now, grandad, it’s welcome to the perfect TikTok life.
Likewise the elderly used to be offered comforting metaphors to soften the process of ageing. That splendid autumn foliage soon be stripped to the bare branch. Or the skin of the peach that must shrivel and decay once the stone sprouts the next generation of tree. Or (one for the old boys here) look how the dandelion, after demonstrating its flourishing prowess, at last succumbs to the white seedhead. So what comfort is to be had from seeing ourselves in this way as part of Nature’s grand scheme? As just a stage on the way to our final composting. Surely we can find a more productive way of measuring ageing.
Still more questions then. How about (in our 60s and 70s) considering our attitudes to change? Not just to physical changes in ourselves but to those core beliefs that (perhaps against our better judgment) we revert to when push comes to shove? Our assumptions about the modern world, are these not just ingrained habit and prejudice masquerading as the wisdom of age? Are we honestly able to take on fresh thinking about culture, breaking world events or accept the next generation’s lifestyle? Even if this might mean abandoning the comfort of the familiar? The answers should inform us if we’re truly becoming old.
An example. How often do we adjust fundamental beliefs and opinions In the wake of the horrors our world presents to us? Take our reaction to increased migration to our shores or increasing climate change or famine in Africa or (closer to home) war in Europe. Does our perception of today’s world change as, for example, it would have on hearing of JFK’s assassination sixty years ago? After that previously unthinkable event the world appeared suddenly and frighteningly unpredictable. Probably still in our teens, we felt personally vulnerable. Now we will comfort ourselves by saying we’ve seen it all before.
I am 70 going on 80 