Resisting An Age Phobic Culture

Resisting An Age Phobic Culture

BLOGGER:   JESSE MENDES

There are some people in this world that approach every birthday in their later years with a sense of dread; an unwelcome, God-forsaken, doomsday event.

One of those people is my mother. Every year I try to remind her of the level of self possession and appreciation for life that she has now, that continues to grow as she gets older, and that she never had when she was young. Every year I point to her the strength, the beauty and the wisdom with which she perceives life now, that defines her day to day experience, and that only came with age. Every year, she admits I am right. My mother is an extraordinary woman with extraordinary depth, and a capacity for love and sheer delight that most people can only dream about. And yet despite her treasures; despite her sanctuary of a home and her beloved cat creatures and her rich social life and her back yard of magical forest fauna, every year, she fights me. Every year, as I implore her to remember who she is and how she inspires me, she clings to her disgust about age, insisting that I won’t understand until I reach her age.

Perhaps she is right. Except that I believe we all have, to some extent, a hand in how we experience, or respond to, the inevitabilities of life – and our emotional responses are shaped, in part, by our attitudes. And I don’t want to dread growing older. Maybe I can’t control that. Maybe there is some genetically-pre-disposed, universal experience to getting older that I’m oblivious to. Or maybe we’ve all been sold a bill of goods; an ideology so utterly devoid of virtue or any morsel of humanity – that to age is to become undesirable, impotent, irrelevant and disposable.

There it is. The elephant in the room. Well, hardly. Common attitudes about aging in North America are nothing short of pathological, and yet somehow, they make up most of the propaganda we all willingly participate in every day. My mother is one of many victims of a mass media marketing machine, peddling warped ideals of an age phobic culture. How will I fare? Will I succumb to mainstream dictum?

Not if I can help it.

Jesse Mendes is a writer, editor and journalist who is deeply committed to helping to change how older women are perceived in North America, and to dispeling the stigma around aging. Her blog can be found on the Blogroll on this web site, and on the link on her Twitter page, where she goes by the name SeptemberMay.

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Facebooking at 40…

Facebooking at 40

BLOGGER: DEBORAH HEISER

So…I finally broke down and joined Facebook.  After all, it’s one of the most popular sites for people over 40.  How could I resist?  I was hesitant, I have to admit–I even poo poo-ed it.  At first I just went through the motions of joining (leaving off my picture of course – so no one would know I joined).  Then I started trolling the site.  Punching in names.  Looking at pictures.  Punching in names.  Looking at pictures.  It was a secret obsession.  The first few days, every time my husband came in the room I’d click on something else so he wouldn’t know I’d been trolling around on Facebook (FB as it’s referred to by us insiders).  I would act like I’d been busy working on something important  (like backing up my hard drive or something).  But the obsession didn’t wane.

I uploaded my picture and started responding to   “friend requests” from people I hadn’t heard from in decades.  Hit by a wave of nostalgia and curiosity, I continued on – staying up late and procrastinating on other work so I could continue with my new obsession.  It was fun to remember grade school antics with old friends, see pictures of them with their children and husbands and pets.  See the guys who lost their hair and gained a gut, the girls who stayed remarkably good looking, and to read about how the “wild girls” had tamed down and were now caring moms and wives.  It was a sense of relief to see how so many people had moved away and went on to do interesting things with their lives.  Plus, with the click of a button to request a friend, I could reconnect with people and chat online as though decades had not passed.

Now that a couple of weeks have passed, I have to say that my initial curiosity and obsession has started to wane and I’m past the point of needing to log in several times a day.   I think it is because there is still a superficial quality to the site .  And I just don’t quite “get” some of the aspects.   I can’t understand, some of the “poke”, “super poke” and flutterby (probably have that one spelled wrong), or the gifting and getting drinks for people.  I keep screwing them up.  For example, someone poked me to “go dancing” and I couldn’t find a response other than “throw a sheep” or “give a hug” or “chest bump” with the person. (It turns out there are other choices but I couldn’t figure out how to find them).  Anyway, I chose to “chest bump” the woman–I guess it is okay to be socially awkward as long as it is online.  Right?  Someone else got me a dog award ribbon.  Should I have been offended?  And, when someone gave me a “drink” I thought it was cute, but was confused about how to accept it without giving it out to 20+ other people.

Anyway, here’s the thing: I think these pokings, giftings and other things are okay, but what I really wanted was to go beyond the “super-poking” and fake gifting.  I wanted to find out what people were actually up to.  And not on a screen where everyone else could see everything I wrote.  After all, what if my co-workers were also secretly trolling FB and found out I’d had such a blast in high school going out drinking and doing all kinds of wild things I like to pretend I never did.  Or, what if they found out I chest bumped with a woman or threw a sheep at her with a super poke?  Please, how seriously would anyone take me? Now that I’m 40, I have a need for more than online sheep throwing.  If I’m going to continue staying up late, I want it to be for something more than curiosity clicking on the internet. 

As a developmental psychologist, I realized that what I was doing (well, not the secret trolling and awkward “poking”) was actually in keeping with the developmental milestones of midlife.  As we age it is normal to shed some of our superficial friendships and concentrate on more “intimate” or fulfilling relationships.  This is often because we have families and hectic work schedules that make it impossible to maintain a large network of relationships as we used to.  So over the course of our 20’s and 30’s we weed out the less meaningful friendships, or spend less time with them, so they just fade away.  We concentrate on the relationships that are most satisfying, and most meaningful.  After all, time is precious when you’re exhausted from work and raising children.

After realizing that I was on the right developmental trajectory for my age (phew!), I asked myself… What did I take from my FB experience these past couple of weeks?  I now know that I can reach out to my “friends” from past and present.  There are more people out there than I knew I knew.  It is like an online security blanket.  But what if there were a place to chat with those “friends” about topics that are current?  Maybe a blog? …..

What are your thoughts?   

To read the bio for Deborah Heiser, click here.

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