“And by that measure many old people haven’t aged. They’ve lost their tender years, sand through fingers, had their middle years’ compromise stretch out into what their lives have come to mean, never really arriving at age, only being thwarted in the practice of their old habits of dexterity.” — Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (p. 287), North Atlantic Books
We abhor getting old.
Death.
That’s a definite no-no.
If anything the situation is getting worse.
The fashion; the need to stay young; to eat all the right things; and to keep going until the bitter end.
When I cast an enquiring eye over the first part of my life, the old people I knew were very different to the ones that now proliferate. Perhaps two World Wars had something to do with loosening their grip on expectation and not resiling from their demise — or the end of anything — but age seemed to be something that came down from the gods and if it wasn’t accepted, it was certainly part of the bargain of being born and alive to whatever the world offered.
This message didn’t last. It couldn’t. Again, it was all part of living up to our potential which I take to mean we’re all meant to live longer and longer lives.
But do we age?
Do we truly age?
Oh sure, the energy may have abated, our looks, well, we look a little different and we know the body-mind is slowly, err, if not fading, then certainly it’s not holding up to its end of the bargain but I’m deeply sceptical that we’re capable of letting go to be claimed by limits, frailty and woebegoneness.
I know that I generalise like hell but what we have now is a cohort of middle-aged people who refuse to age.
And speaking personally, I don’t think that’s a good thing.
For a start, imagine a world where we’re kept alive by ever more complex medical procedures and revolutionary drugs. At what stage we do say ‘enough’? When we’ve tried everything available — whatever the side effects. And what about our wake? Sure our dent on the planet is ameliorated by the lessening of our wants and needs but there’s still a price to be paid by everyone living longer and longer days.
You might ask: why we shouldn’t try to stay young for as long as possible? And I mean for all of us to aspire to live well past 100 and to live a full and active life? Speaking personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse; namely, to keep going just so that we can say that we made the most of our energy and give-a-shit. If nothing else, if we didn’t get our allotted century, who would we blame? Us, the medics and or something or someone else? What about elderhood, wisdom and ancestry? That would go the same as everything else of the earth where we engineer a future just because we can. And what life lessons would be passed on to the next generation?
As I’ve said so often, I’m sure I’ve got this all wrong.
Then again, I do so wish I could find people who spoke about age not as an achieved thing — e.g. you don’t look your age — but as a way of informing everyone else what it’s like to live within the bounds of our humanness, frailty and diminishment. At least for me, there’s much more to be had there than having constantly to chase after the chimaera of youth.
Take care.
Blessings,
Julian
Letting go
Olivia Neutron Bomb didn’t get enough years in my opinion. So sad to see her depart.