This youth wasted on the young- or now I am old, where did I put my 20-year-old body?
As an older person, I am losing my eyesight, hearing, and hair, but am retaining water (in large amounts). This getting-old business is not for the faint of heart.
Driving to the store yesterday, I looked down, and my mother's hands were on the steering wheel, more honestly, my grandmother's hands. What is it about aging that makes our sagging skin crawl? Is the discomfort purely physical, or does it stem from a deeper awareness of mortality and vulnerability?
As Baby Boomers, our experience of aging is historically and culturally distinct. We have lived through rapid social change, extended life expectancy, and evolving narratives about productivity and identity. While working, tending, and fighting our children's high school math teacher, the connection to our culture quickly passed us by. Once in a while, we could catch a glimpse of Tina Turner in a short skirt, with those legs. Or melt at Frank Sinatra, giving us permission to do it our way. But overall, the cultural changes of the times alluded most of us.
Unlike previous generations, we are less inclined to accept aging as passive decline. This raises important questions: What does older age actually bring? And how will our experience differ from those who came before us, whose lives were shaped by very different expectations of growing old? And most importantly, to connect with our grandchildren without knowing all the details of Travis and Taylor?
It all makes me long for my 20 year-old-body.
Your post really spoke to me, especially the moment about recognizing your mother’s and grandmother’s hands on the steering wheel. That image captures something pop culture rarely slows down enough to talk about honestly. We spend so much time celebrating youth that aging can feel like something happening to us rather than something we are allowed to make meaning out of. What stood out to me is how you describe losing touch with culture while still being surrounded by it. It made me think about how pop culture quietly decides who gets visibility and whose stories fade into the background. If pop culture helps us feel connected, then aging can feel isolating when those shared references no longer include us. I wonder how pop culture could do better at telling aging stories that feel complex instead of invisible, and whether that might change how we experience growing older at all.
ReplyDelete