Since We Are All Headed There, Why Is Everyone Scared Of Getting Older?

By Karen and Erica

Why is everyone appalled at the thought of getting older?

A few years ago The New Yorker magazine published an article entitled Why Ageism Never Gets Old. It’s a pretty fascinating analysis, well worth a read, and it provides a few possible answers.

A key thesis is that the youth culture of Silicon Valley is fostering a climate in which 30 is considered old and people older than that are simply irrelevant. The author has some entertaining anecdotes to illustrate his point. He also puts forward some interesting facts. For example, the term agism was coined in 1969, after the Federal Discrimination in Employment Act set 40 as the age after which an employee could assert an age discrimination claim. (Paradoxically, that was right about the time when people began to live longer and longer.) And, Hollywood defines old starting very young-—except as to Morgan Freeman, now 84, who as an older actor has played the head of each branch of government, and God. The article also provides some good news for those of us in the U.S.—several non-industrial cultures are much more aggressive about older people than we are—disposing of them by, for example, stabbing them in the heart.

As the author notes, we are all headed towards getting older—until we stop getting older, which is a terminal situation. So why do we have a negative view about age? A recent chat with a friend was enlightening. She remarked that by the time her grandmother was in her 70s, she was not physically fit, she wandered around her home in muumuus all day, and she did little other than cook. The friend loved her grandmother, but was not at all interested in becoming her grandmother. The friend’s mother, on the other hand, who is now 77, is fit, dresses well, goes out, has a 2020 car, and is enjoying her busy life. This is a life to which the friend does aspire.

We are of the view that we have to own our age. We have no interest in pretending to be younger than we are. But that doesn't mean we’re going to let ourselves go to the dogs. Far from it. We do our best to look good, and to take care of our minds and bodies. We are engaged—we go out and do things. We think being our age is a gift, especially now that public health advances in the middle of the last century have allowed us to be both sentient and experienced as we continue to live our lives.

We want to make aging attractive to younger people. There are so many benefits to having decades of life behind you—not the least of which is more time to do what you want to do. We hope to give younger people an appealing picture of older people, instead of one that fills them with dread. Because fearing age is probably one reason why younger people want to avoid and isolate older people—they don’t want to be faced with a future they find alarming.

We think the message is actually getting some traction. More and more younger people who meet us are interested in what we are up to—even when they hear how old we are. They see we are out in the world, we dress for success, we enjoy our coffees and cocktails—and we have no interest in running their lives.

Getting older is a blessing to which every young person should aspire. Let’s make sure they can see that.