Living Over Aging
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Living Over Aging: Elder Journal - Aging is Beautiful
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Elder Journal
by Paul Takayanagi
I was in a music store this week and browsing through the Contemporary Music category I noticed a prominently displayed sign above the CD racks. It read "Music that is Ageless Like You." The word ageless was highlighted in larger and bolder print so it stood out from the others. As a gerontologist, I am acutely aware of how the media presents aging related concepts. This word, ageless, is an oxymoron. It includes the words Age and Less. The dictionary definition is "seemingly not growing older, eternal." It connotes that time has stopped and is the counterpart to the word timeless, another oxymoron. The truth is the opposite. We actually age more and time moves forward not backward. In fact, nothing stands still in time and certainly not our own birthdays as any person over 75 years can attest to!
Yet we are often comforted by these words. The sign above the CD’s read "ageless like you." It was intended as a positive message to make a person feel as if age and time could stop in this moment and we could be as we are forever. Ironically I am less and less comforted by words like ageless and timeless. Aging is seen as a debilitating process that reduces a person’s time in the world. People fear aging because they see it as something that lessens life instead of enriching it. They think they will have less health, less physical attractiveness, less contact with others and more problems, illness and disease. Yet, the truth is that we have more people aging than ever before and they are healthier and better off than any other generation of older people before them. I see contemporary aging as a positive phenomenon that enriches people and society. We have more opportunities and time to experience life’s bounties.
The key to successful aging is to forget about how young you do or don’t look and focus instead on how living longer can enrich your life and those around you in more significant ways. A friend of mine, a grandmother of two, recently went and had a complete "makeover." She got the works, a facelift, liposuction and "tummy and fanny tucks." When she was done her friends all agreed that she looked fabulous and some were even jealous. She was in seventh heaven. Her two granddaughters live on the other side of the country. When they came to visit her after she had healed completely, the younger one, a four year old, exclaimed, "But you don’t look like you. You don’t look real!"
There’s a wonderful passage in the book "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams* that reads; "What is Real?" asked the Rabbit one day. "Real isn’t how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand…once you are Real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always."
Real people aren’t stuffed toys but the message is still relevant. One of my favorite cliches is "get real." Real as the passage above says is about how you are loved not about how you look. I’m all for looking good but naturally not artificially. There are other ways to be beautiful than physical looks. To me, the best case scenario is that the older we are the more beautiful we become in ways that really matter, maturity, wisdom and experience. I know a lot of older artists and their hands are often exquisitely old, formed by years of crafting works of art, they have become almost works of art in themselves. If you’ve been with a partner for a long time and you really love them then you see them as beautiful not in spite of but absolutely with all the wrinkles, extra fat and gravitational effects. That’s reality and has to do with aging more not less.
03/00
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