The River of Years

I’m at an age when thinking about age is something I do often. I reached my Medicare year, age 65, in March. Little did I or my fellow boomers think we would be cheering this milestone, because it means qualifying for medical insurance when many of us had lost any health insurance coverage a few anxious years ago.

The age-old saw is that “aging is not for the timid.”

I have to marshal my courage to face physical activities that I sailed through when younger, because my body has betrayed me in ways that I never anticipated. My mother, who is 88, lives with us, and our family copes daily with the vagaries of Mom’s physical and emotional challenges.

At 65, I don’t yet face those same emotional challenges that Mom faces, and perhaps never will, given that I am by nature optimistic and Mom is more naturally melancholy. Our family is learning that it also takes a village to nurture an elder.

I feel like the same person I was as a 20-something, with perhaps some perspective gained from thinking about and feeling the things I’ve seen and done. I come from the generation that just knew we weren’t going to survive to age 30, and yet, here we are. We still have things we want to experience and do to make a difference in our communities. We want our abilities and capacities to be acknowledged by being invited to participate and contribute.

Ageism is an interesting form of oppression.

Ageism can exclude young people, because the bias is that they just don’t have enough wisdom, presumably gained from experience, to make meaningful contributions. Yet, beware the older person who has one year’s experience 20 times and is someone that no one would call wise. Ageism can also exclude older people, because the morality imposed is that older folks need to step back voluntarily and give younger people a chance.

Being relevant to the demographics that actually exist in one’s social groups is extremely important. It is ultimately about being present with “what is” and not merely chasing “what the ‘experts’ or everyone else says we are supposed to desire.” So what if our neighborhood or church doesn’t have young families. So what if our book club or community center isn’t currently serving seniors or 40-somethings. Responding to the needs of those in front of us matters more than seeking to attract another demographic based merely on the principles of representation and marketing.

Now, before you mistake what I’ve just written as endorsing exclusivity or as being opposed to embracing diversity and inclusivity, let me be clear. If you have some racial and ethnic, single and married, LGBTQI and straight, working and professional class, and other diverse people in your community, it behooves you in the name of all that is right, good, just, and godly to be inviting, welcoming, and inclusive to people from all those diverse groups. But while striving for diversity, justice, and inclusivity, you must still serve those who are in front of you. They matter, too.

Age is a strange thing, complicated by a staggeringly large number of factors. Age is the facts of the chronology from our birth to our present to our death. It is a state of mind—how we see and express ourselves. It is the stereotypes placed upon us by the various social groups in which we participate. Age is both objective, existing outside of ourselves, and subjective, colored by our personal experience of our days flowing into the river of years.

Most of us don’t think of age as the first indicator of our identity. We are much more likely to name personality traits, interests, and skills than age to describe ourselves. We might secondarily name relationships such as mother, father, sister, brother, friend, or descriptors of the service we offer to the world such as volunteer, salesperson, teacher, artist, engineer, etc.

Age is something we acquire. Age is also something to which, frankly, we aspire, even if we don’t say it in exactly that way, because the alternative is dying far too early. We get to choose our attitudes and participation in our living so that age doesn’t bound who we become.

In some ways, one could think of age as something each of us wears according to our own style—maybe like Peter Pan’s shadow that grows larger or smaller depending on where we stand in the light. Perhaps then, the secret to aging well is deciding where to stand in the light.