The view that age is a state of mind sells anti-aging products and makes seniors feel better about themselves but perhaps we are just kidding ourselves. Some may look good for their age, while others must surrender to the inevitable sag and wrinkle. If you have the means for a little cosmetic enhancement then I guess age is relative. I enjoyed a second look at The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which is a film that oddly turns the aging process upside down. Benjamin returns to baby-like form as some of his senses get shuffled out of play. Similarly, as I age, my sense of caution, for example, is winning out over my sense of adventure. If I’m honest with myself, my body has been aging steadily since I passed sixty. My hands mark me; I see my father’s tanned oniony skin when I pause from this typing.
Parents love to report how their baby is a day old, a week old, then a month old. The age of the newly born is so precious it must be clearly defined in celebration of its existence. Children sometimes correct you if you guess their age wrong. A ‘Four’ is adjusted to ‘Four and a half!’ because at that tender age 6 months carries great significance to their rank in the world. On the other side of the age specific spectrum, a decade may seem a brief span of time to a septuagenarian.
While I was paying attention to other things, The Age of Aquarius, morphed into New Age practises, to the Age of Entitlement, which was part of the Consumer Age before being summarized as the Anthropocene. Ironically we may be facing a global environment catastrophe equivalent to the Dark Ages because our leaders maintain Stone Age regressive thinking. It’s the age old story of greed, immediate gratification and wishful thinking. We aren’t getting any wiser.
We lost many aged folk through Covid19 pandemic missteps. Strange that we can value vintage automobiles, aged cheddar or cellar casked wine more than we do our grandparents. Our standards around assisted living facilities (barely sanitized old age homes) must change to reflect a greater respect for what elders can provide in a wholesome, healthy society. Wisdom, like beauty and love is ageless in a way. When our terms of reference for Age become so narrow that we begin labelling people dismissively as Boomers, GenXers, Millennials, we are in danger of demonstrating ageism, as restrictive a label as all the other forms of prejudice.
Mature First Nations individuals whom I have known have often been referred to as Elders and I’d like to follow the path of humility, wisdom and patience that comes with that territory. In correspondence with the younger members of my family I have self identified and signed off on notes as West Coast Elder. This WCE moniker helps distinguish me geographically and it’s also how I’d like to be perceived as a senior member of the collective.
I’ll take that as a respectful salute to my agedness.
Catch My Drift? 