By Karen and Erica

One of our central premises is that there should be no artificial barriers—especially antiquated ideas about age and gender—that create obstacles for women reaching their post-retirement goals. We want to be fully immersed in the wider world. We believe we can achieve that goal if, together, we defy outdated thinking by demonstrating the value of experience and wisdom.

Of course, we never anticipated that a different sort of barrier would be created as a pandemic swept over the globe, putting a wall between us—and everything. COVID-19 has kept us in our homes, with the occasional shopping trip or strategic walk. COVID-19 has forced us to cover our faces when we emerge in public. It has kept us from the people who make us look good, and from shopping for clothes, and from wearing clothes, and from lunch and drinks and movies and plays and baseball games. It has kept us from going to the office. It has kept us from meeting with our colleagues, and with people we would like to meet so they can become colleagues.

COVID-19 has also resulted in a particularly rancid mutation of the agist trope that people over 65 are useless senior citizens. That they might as well be sacrificed in order that everyone can get back to the business of living. That COVID-19 is nature’s way of Boomer removal. That COVID-19 means we can sideline senior citizens by making them stay home forever—for their own good, of course.

The presumption that every person over 65 is frail and vulnerable and has no further use to society was never true, and is ascertainably not true now. Where would we be without the authoritative, and elegant, voices of Ruth Bader Ginsberg (87), Anthony Fauci (79) and Nancy Pelosi (80)? Each one brainy and full of life—and style. They are living the Thirty Year Dividend. Hard to imagine more potent evidence of the mindlessness of sidelining, let alone sacrificing, any person just because she or he is over an arbitrary age. We should never give up human resources that come only with the passage of years. Putting people out to pasture and wasting what only they know is senseless—especially in a global crisis that calls for all hands on deck.

Of course, being over 65 is no guarantee of wisdom and knowledge. That truth has also been plainly in evidence, as has its terrible consequence.

The point is that people should be evaluated based on their individual characteristics, not based solely upon their age. Some are wise and some are not. Some suffer obvious mental decline. Most do not. Some are frail, but most are not. And whatever their circumstances, no-one should be categorized as a worthless sacrificial sheep just because of years spent alive.

The answer? Yes, we really do need older people.