On Aging and Ageism

You are reading Shy Guy Meets the Buddha: Reflections on Work, Love, and Nature, by Don Boivin. Here, I share my imperfect and sometimes heart-rending path to peace. 💚

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You’re around 60, give or take a decade, and there is this 25- or 30-year-old, maybe 35, whom you’ve gotten to know a bit through your circle of friends. You were first introduced at a party, and you’ve said hi to them a handful of times since. You even had a brief conversation once (it was small talk, but still...).

But the next time you run into them, they don’t smile and they barely look at you. And the same thing the time after that. It seems they either don’t remember you—even though you remember them well—or they simply don’t care.

I’ve experienced this often enough to know what it could be: Ageism.* In a youth- and beauty-obsessed culture, young people often view those who are middle-aged and beyond as irrelevant, uninformed, and of no more use than that faded 1986 Dodge Caravan overgrown with weeds in your neighbor’s backyard.

“Okay, boomer,” they might say, a snub that is deeply offensive.

This kind of condescending brush-off is not just a result of the generation gap, or lingering remnants of the “personal fable,” in which teenagers believe themselves to be uniquely special. I don’t even think it’s a conscious act; I think it’s a reflex sprung from deep societal conditioning. Young people have grown up in a consumer culture that saturates them in the glorification of youth, and by implication roots them in the assumption that aging is objectionable and shameful. They never even had a chance to learn to see older people as cultured vital humans who have lived and grown through the same struggles, drama, dreams, joys, and suffering they themselves are now experiencing.

They don’t want to be us so why would they be happy to see us?

I guess we can’t blame “society,” though, because we are society. I can, however, think of one possible way to counteract this dismissal of older people by younger people: Get books in their hands. Books written by older people, books about older people, books about cultures that respect and honor older people. Books by Native American writers like Louise Erdrich and Tommy Orange, or books about aging characters who don’t take shit off no one, like Janina in Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, or the many original and disruptive books of essays that Kurt Vonnegut continued penning until the day he died.

Books expand minds beyond cultures and generations, and I think reading is the antidote to a profit-obsessed society that will tell you aging is unacceptable so they can sell you the insurance, weight-loss programs, skin conditioners and beauty products, fashion trends, drugs and plastic surgery, self-improvement courses, and miracles cures.

The dollar may be deafening in today’s world but a book can blast to smithereens the shallow spin of a billionaire’s bullshit.

Some considerations on aging and ageism:

1. Aging is what is supposed to happen. Rejecting aging is rejecting life

2. Wrinkles are our first-place ribbons: let’s wear them proudly!

3. Friendships that span decades are possible and beautiful; my two closest friends are fifteen years my senior and fifteen years my junior

4. Old people are just young people in mature bodies

5. Books open minds and close culture and generation gaps. Get books into the hands of young people! Give books as gifts. Talk about books

6. We could all, young and old alike, benefit from:

a. holding someone’s gaze a little longer instead of quickly looking down or away

b. realizing that a smile is a gift to ourselves as well as the receiver

c. granting someone who’s older or not like us the gift of acknowledgement: “Hello. It’s nice to see you again.” 😊

Of course, an unchecked need for the attention of others, regardless of their age, isn’t exactly a harmony-producing state of mind in the first place. I pay attention to and try to understand my own needs and motivations; that’s the first line of defense, I think, because understanding my own behavior puts me in charge, rather than leaving me at the mercy of a storm of erratic feelings. (WHY was I offended when that young person didn’t acknowledge me?) But there are also ways of helping awaken younger people who have seeds of awareness and expansion within them just waiting for some water and fertilizer.

Books make great fertilizer!

DB 🙏💚

*I grant that there could be other factors at play; shyness, introversion, autism, distraction, depression, etc.

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