AGEISM -- IT JUST NEVER GETS OLD

MY BOYS AND I SWIMMING IN OKANAGAN LAKE
LEFT - RIGHT AGES 47, 38, 71, 41

AGEISM.  That prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age.

Factoid: 82% of Americans 50 years and older say they have experienced prejudice, discrimination, or stereotyping based on ageism (University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging, July 2020).

Factoid: “One thing Americans agree on?  Our politicians are too old” (Chris Cillizza, CNN).  American president, Joe Biden, is 79.  Speaker, Nancy Pelosi is 82.  Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer is 71.  Mitch McConnell is 80.  Donald Trump is 76.  And how about across the sea? Queen Elizabeth just died at 96.  Her son, King Charles III is 73.

Factoid:  We are all suffering from ageism because all of us are aging.  And regarding prejudice, I experience ageism all the time, never toward me, but instead self-inflicted and self-professed by my aged peers toward themselves!

Well you know, Neil, now I’m getting on my aches and pains just don’t ever go away … (a 74-year-old relative who now blames her senior age on everything that goes awry in her life).

No band needs a 70-year-old bass player … (an 81-year-old former bandmate who still wants to gig but has burnt just too many musical bridges, not as a senior, but as a middle-ager).

When you’re old you become invisible … (a very disgruntled 80-something former colleague, a superannuated English Literature teacher who was never effervescent not even in his youth, at least not in the years I worked alongside him).

I could go on and on but then I would be behaving like that stereotypical old person who simply repeats himself repeats himself repeats himself.

B.F. Skinner (American psychologist) said that for a person to get old, that person just must act old. To get old then, a person can simply be someone who always is complaining about an ache or pain, someone who always is wanting assistance or is always needing help in some physical regard (entering and exiting a vehicle for example).  Yes, acting old will get you old.  I shall point out that Skinner was a behavior psychologist.

Another news feed I just read yesterday stated that 73% of our population holds biased attitudes towards older people. Really? DUH. Of course, they do.  Typically, there are lots of older people who are literally slowing up those who are striving to thrive on zoom-time.  Just check out the queue of old people on any senior shopping day, holding up the customer lines by arguing over product prices, or buying exorbitant amounts of lottery tickets, by counting their coins one-by-one as they delicately retrieve them from their purses or pockets.  Stereotypically, these same fogies in the store are those who drive to the store, the whole trip having their left turn-signal blinking and blinking and blinking.

But I am not writing this to demean or defeat old age, I am writing this only to defy ageism on personal terms.  I know such a mission cannot be accomplished by reflecting on my past through the lens of romantic nostalgia.  Yes, yes, yes, when I was a young man, I was a social magnet and great fun to be around.  I was 6’1” and 185 pounds of muscle with sun-bleached hair and a California-baked body.  And blah blah blah I was Adonis! 

“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you,” said the baseball great, Leroy Satchel Paige.  I know that wallowing in reminiscence can only take me backward, providing too easy an opportunity to live out my days in the wrong direction. Even just talking about the good ol’ days is a stereotypical trait assigned to old people.  I do not want to be that old guy who tells stories about the high snowbanks and endless summers in the much better but much harder times of yesteryear.  Acting old is getting old.  Nope. I am not there yet.

Hmmm.  But I am on my way.

As I age, I am suffering the conventional maladies.  I have a bad memory for people’s names.  To compensate or accommodate myself in this regard I always resort to mnemonics.  For example, if I meet a “Rose” I try to encrypt an image of “Rose” doing something with her “nose.”  This mnemonic something could range to anything from Rose scratching to blowing or even picking her nose.

My eyesight is failing.  In my middle-age I became far-sighted, literally, not necessarily metaphorically.  Due to my farsightedness, my optometrist recommended mono-vision, the employment of just one contact (reading) lens placed upon my dominant left eye.  To describe this I explain that if one were to purchase a pair of reading glasses from a drugstore or anywhere actually, and then just punch out the right lens before placing them on the face, this is the look that I live on a dailies basis (pun intended).

Oftentimes I suffer mental fatigue.  This is likely because I am always in thought, and one of my recurring thoughts being existential dread.  And I am convinced this is prompted not by my age, but by my philosophical woolgathering of other things, including the meaning of life (who does not want to know if a passion can become a source of money), the purpose of religion (who wants this life to be is that all there is), and the reasons for my going to the gym (unless one is an athlete whose job depends upon strength, flexibility, and fitness, all others go to the gym simply to look good). Note to self and to everyone: Evolutionary Psychology suggests our only purpose for being is to procreate and continue the species; therefore, going to the gym to look good is an innate drive to attract a mate.

And oftentimes I suffer physical fatigue.  Factoid:  Though I now pound fewer miles on the road than I used to -- In the ‘80s I ran ten miles a day; in the ‘90s I ran five miles a day; now I am a fair weather runner, running just three miles or so three times a week and only in summertime.  However, the rest of my fitness regime I have not reduced.  I still lift weights five days a week, and I take private martial arts lessons (Muay Thai) one day per week.  A couple times a week I am on the street busking with my guitar, and I try to gig once every couple of months at one of the local bars.  Right now, expressing all this recreational activity brings on an epiphany -- no wonder I feel, at times, physically drained!

But alas, we shall see.  I am still at that age that I am more than willing to work as hard as I can for as long as I can.  Factoid:  Calculating my longevity factor through the actuarial sciences, I am now beyond middle age, unless of course, I live another seventy-one years!

At least now I no longer wonder what I will look like when I get old. Other men of my ilk are either balding or pot-bellied or both.  My genetics has certainly favored me in the male-pattern baldness department and my exercise regimen will keep my belly flat.

Here are some personal facts:  I know I will be six feet tall (I have lost an inch somewhere).  I know I will weigh 160 pounds (I have lost 25 pounds somewhere).  I know I will have a shock of platinum hair (I have lost my brown hair), and I know I will not be dining at Swiss Chalet (I have not lost my taste in downtown fine dining).  I know that I will not be quantum fit, but most certainly be close to super fit (I will have a fitness addiction).  I know that I will place above the 95^th percentile range within my age group (I measure my body fat percentage on a regular basis).  With authority, too, I can state that my mental and physical fitness when measured against the age groups below me, still have me hovering above the 90^th percentile (I am full of bluster such as this).

“Let’s hang on to what we’ve got” sang The Four Seasons.  Well, I want to hold on to what I have got.  I want to continue doing the things I love to do.  Some of my closest friends who are retirees continually ask me when I plan to retire.  But I still love going to work every day and hanging out with my colleagues and clients, while at the same I still love leaving work every day to get to the gym or the park.  B.F. Skinner (my favorite American psychologist) thought that it was a mistake for people to retire at all! I tend to agree with him specifically about me, but never about others.  What others think, what others do, is others’ business. 

I never shall deign to that middle-class misadventure called retirement.  The world is still my demesne.  I will do as I like for as long as I live. 

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:

While out busking I met Luthier EMERSON, who just recently to Regina from Gravelbourg, SK.

BARON IN THE BELL TOWER

SELF IN THE BELL TOWER

Baron and I were (somewhat) solicited to ring the bell at the KNOX METROPOLITAN CHURCH in downtown Regina. The bell rang for 9 hours and 30 minutes, 25,301 times! Each ring represented one day of reign for QUEEN ELIZABETH II. 

*Please note that we were not ringing that bell to celebrate the British legacies of colonialism in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere.  We were prompted only by Quasimodo curiosity and the pleasurable tintinnabulation.