(My adventures with Max return with the next post.)
AGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.
If we pay attention to our thoughts, we’ll be shocked by the endless litany of limits we place upon ourself and our experience. This is insanity.
But on top of our personal limits, society bashes us with an endless barrage of artificial, negative constraints.
Many of these limits, personal or cultural, have no basis in reality. So we build ourselves a prison based on an illusion, pretending as if it’s really there. We function as best we can inside, but stay within the all-important limits. This is not Life à la Hot, this is Life à la Not.
Nowhere in our lives are these buzzkill boundaries more in play than our culture’s view of aging.
The brainwashing starts early. The cult of youth hammers away at us, sending us constant messages about the glory of youth and the bummer of old age. For those of us who came up in the Sixties, remember “Hope I die before I get old?” Talkin’ bout my generation … Why, you weren’t even trustworthy if you were over thirty!
Yet, that was back when old people were seriously old, anyway. Imagine, the Beav’s father, Ward Cleaver, was supposed to be thirty-five! More like pushing sixty. Meanwhile, pushing sixty today is the new thirty-five!
When we’re fifty suddenly we get an invitation from AARP to join. It’s like a text from the Grim Reaper. Subtle, insidious. Overnight, we’re old. Retirement and Social Security loom ominously. Medicare beckons a bony finger. Bwa ha ha ha.
We have to bounce these cues off our consciousness, and banish them back to the Fifties. To be truly alive means to delight in positive expectations, freeing ourselves from obsolete beliefs. Take issue with every ageist archaeological artifact that surfaces, from within you or without. When seeing a doctor for back pain, and he asks, “Well, what do you expect at your age?” you reply, “I expect my back to function as it always has!”
Because expectation is everything. Expect life in bold age to be as rich — or richer — than it was in youth. Since we’re getting better and better, there’s no reason it shouldn’t.
Speed limits make sense, but age limits? Never.
Not much progress when you consider the twin beds of the Fifties have morphed into Cialis twin bathtubs. It’s up to us to change the conversation.
Because the same old is so, well, same old.
Yours truly,
