Having Lived Or Existed For A Long Time

From a young age, our developing brains are flooded with images, songs, and stories that stoke fears of being old. Our beloved bedtime stories are filled with older characters portrayed as ugly, scary, silly, or feeble. As we grow up, we hear our parents speak disparagingly about feeling old and watch as they make concerted efforts to act young to stay relevant. As teens, we are utterly unaware that our favorite songs teem with ageist lyrics. Messages suggesting that healthy aging means being active, independent, and physically and cognitively robust wash over us. We equate any amount of dependence as failure. Our expectations are unrealistic. As mortal beings, we eventually and inevitably experience physical decline. The truth is that we are never independent but always interdependent. Cultural messaging presents caregiving as a burden that leads to burnout rather than a natural and normal part of human relationships. The beauty and reciprocity inherent in providing and receiving care get lost. As if a suit can give us any meaningful insight into what it is like to be any given older person.

Coming Round Again

We fail to see that these sentiments are themselves ageist. Using the term ageless denies age. It screams out, I don’t see age. But we need to see age. It is a vital part of our human identity, and of the human condition. They should be not just recognized, but venerated. Using strategies that downplay or ignore the aging process to fight ageism is like putting out a fire with an extinguisher filled with kerosene. Understanding the history of ageism will help you to develop the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to disrupt ageism and ableism within yourself and to help others do the same. We can’t do better until we know better. It’s time for us to grow up, let go of our desperate need to stay young, and embrace that we age and get old. Are you okay? My kids, husband, friends, coworkers, and, once or twice, new acquaintances were asking me this, almost always with a slightly bemused expression. What was getting me so worked up? Advertisements and media tell us what to look like, how to feel, and what to value.

Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad

We live in a culture of manipulation. We can’t escape it, but we can learn to recognize it, and perhaps begin to change it. I was a senior in high school when I took my first psychology class and discovered that the size of the aging population was growing rapidly. I learned that gerontology is the scientific study of aging from biological, psychological, social, and spiritual perspectives within a holistic framework that focuses on the individual within the context of their environment. Gerontology is very different from geriatrics, a branch of medicine that focuses on older people’s physical health and care. After about two decades in the field, I had an epiphany. I noticed that when others inquired about my career, I’d begin by explaining that I had a passion for working with the aging population. Why did I feel compelled to use the descriptor aging to refer to older adults and later life? I was a highly trained, experienced gerontologist and yet was referring to aging as something that happened to other people. I saw with real clarity for the first time that even I, someone who had dedicated her career to working with older people, had internalized an attitude toward aging as something undesirable, and I wanted to disassociate myself from looking, acting, or being old. The meaning we assign to being old, and the concept of age identity, is socially constructed. Money is a social construct, too. We create social constructs to help us make sense of the world, and they have a powerful influence on how we view people and how we interpret their behavior.

The Sands Of Time

Our understanding of what it means to be old exists because people have accepted it, not because it exists in objective reality. With respect to age identity, we have an accepted understanding that old and young are two distinct and separate states of being. According to our social construct, young people embody stereotypical negative and positive attributes. They are prone to act irresponsibly, even dangerously, but they are also attractive, vibrant, and looking forward to promising futures. Old people on the other hand, according to our social construct, are a homogeneous group comprising people who are frail, dependent, problematic, and fast on their way to becoming incompetent or irrelevant. Terms to describe individuals or groups of people in older age such as aged, elderly, seniors, senior citizens, and old people have been imbued with negative connotations. Old, in and of itself, can be an insulting pejorative. We expect young people to do stupid things like taking uncalculated risks, and we believe that old people will be content quietly sitting on a rocking chair watching the world go by. These assumptions will hold true for some people but will be way off base for others. Moreover, there is nothing about the actual definitions of old and young that should point to value judgments or behavioral expectations. The definition of old has to do with having lived or existed for a long time. The definition of young has to do with having lived or existed for a short time. I began to question my entire framework for understanding aging. I recognized that I had not yet disentangled what I learned about aging through my academic studies from what I knew about aging from the dominant cultural narrative. The dominant cultural narrative represents the sum total of stories and messages that we receive from the media, cultural institutions, social networks, and relationships. Relational ageism, a concept developed by my colleagues Jenny Inker, Ayn Welleford, and me, describes how the norms represented in the dominant cultural narrative become internalized and are then perpetuated and reinforced in a social context.[1] Relational ageism demonstrates how an ageist thought, belief, or attitude can spread from person to person through expression and support. This exchange may seem innocent on the surface, but looking more deeply, we see the value of not looking or acting as if one has aged being promoted and then accepted through gratitude and thanks.