What Is The Saddest Thing About Approaching Advanced Age?

This Hub has been written in response to the title-question, which appeared in the HubPages "Answers" section. To make a long story short (and, actually, to eliminate the need to read this Hub, I guess); while there are certain some sad aspects that can go with advanced age (as with so many other ages), the potential for some of those sadder aspects occurring shouldn't be the focus of, or make up the primary view of, advanced age. There are so many things about advanced age that are about as far from "sad" as things can get. I chose to try to answer this particular question because getting "old" is getting a little closer for me, so I thought the subject was worth reflecting on.

It was in the HubPages "Answers" section that I saw the question (and title of this Hub), "What is the saddest thing about approaching old age?" My immediate reaction to seeing the question was, "There's nothing sad about approaching old age." I suppose it would be better to clarify that by changing it to, "There's nothing sad about approaching old age by itself. There can be, however, more causes for sadness associated with older age." Something else that came to mind for me was the fact that if we're fortunate we're all "approaching old age". Some of us are closer to it than others. Some of us have reached it. Then again, there are people who live to the proverbial "ripe old age" of "whatever" but who don't "become old" - only physically and "chronologically" older.

Most of us know someone who hasn't had all that many birthdays but who are about as old as it gets. Then too, there are some people who are old when they're too young to have figured out how not to be old. Then, ironically, as they mature they become younger.

Age can be both a simple and a complicated thing. It doesn't help that how our age affects us is such an individual thing.

As I considered what title I'd give this Hub, I wasn't sure I wanted to use the phrase, "approaching old age". The reason for that was that I wasn't sure what the asked of the question meant by "old age". Somebody twenty might see forty as "old age". Somebody sixty-five might view eight-five as "old age". As you can see, I just went with the wording of the question as it appeared. When I tell my own age a little farther into this discussion there will undoubtedly be more than a few people who will think, "Lady, you're way beyond 'approaching old age'. Get to the part about telling us the saddest thing about it." To those people I'd say, "Either you're younger than I am, or else you're around my age, give or take, and are seeing yourself as far older than you really ought to be."

Truly advanced age is still a long way off for me (at least as far as I'm concerned); and if there's one thing I've learned about adding up those birthdays over the course of a lifetime, it's that no matter how mature or even "sort of old-ish" (at least in the eyes of some others) we get, we don't, and can't, have a clue about the years we haven't experienced unless/until we experience them. Keeping in mind that I only have so much first-hand experience with only so many birthdays, please understand that my thoughts on this subject are the thoughts of someone who cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, call herself "young" but by someone who has been calling herself "middle aged" for, maybe, a few years longer than would be (shall I say) technically correct.

In any case, back to the original question:

In the Answers section on HubPages, there were a few people who gave their ideas about the saddest thing about approaching old age. More than one person raised the issue of older people regretting not having done something when they were younger and/or before it was too late. Personally, I don't see that as anywhere near the saddest thing about being elderly. The world is full of thirty-five-year-olds who have regrets about something they didn't do when they could have. They usually learn to live with those regrets (or even find a way to at least somewhat fix things by doing, maybe, the next-best thing. Regrets about things we didn't do when the time was right (or more right), or the window-of-opportunity inevitably closed aren't limited to just the elderly; and at least some opportunities to somewhat fix those regrets aren't always limited to just younger people.

Sometimes, too, even when someone older expresses regretting not having done something when he was younger; that kind of regret doesn't necessarily have the same kind of "punch" to it that someone younger (who hears of someone older having this kind of regret) might think. What could be viewed by someone younger as "horrible regret" might actually only be mild regret when experienced by someone who's older. That's a discussion for another time. The point is that I don't necessarily see having that kind of regret as the saddest thing about getting older.

Someone made a fairly off-handed remark about how the body ages. On the one hand, some of the physical realities of age-associated medical conditions (or even "normal wear and tear") shouldn't be underestimated. Depending on how severe someone's age-associated physical "issues" are, medical problems and mental decline can certainly play a huge role in how much sadness a person (and those who love him) experience. The fact is, however, that not everyone experiences serious health problems throughout any number of years following middle-age. Not everyone experiences mental decline either, or if he does it may only begin to occur at an extremely advanced age.

Dementia can, of course, be caused by Alzheimer's Disease; but not everyone gets Alzheimer's. It can also be caused, or contributed to, by other medical conditions. Regardless of the cause, every elderly person does not get dementia; and, again, if it does occur it may occur until very close to the end of several years of living as an elderly person. With regard to Alzheimer's Disease, there was a study done on some nuns who were elderly and remarkably active and mentally sharp. The idea was to identify what it was about their activities that apparently had helped them remain as active and mentally sharp as they were. What was discovered as a result of that study (and apparently the authorization to examine brains after participants had died) was that physical examination of the brain could show the presence of advanced Alzheimer's Disease without the participant's ever having shown sigins of having it while she was alive.


With regard to dementia, it's also worth point out that what sometimes appears to others as dementia is not that at all. With the reality of younger people's not understanding how, or why, someone elderly may think the way he does, or do some of the things he does; there can be times when others interpret things he says or does as "strange". Elderly people can become so tired of trying to be understood, they sometimes just give up on trying and just withdraw (at least in some ways or from people who make them feel as if they're misunderstood).

The question asked, however, wasn't about the whole, overall, picture of some of the problems that can come with being of advanced age. It was about the saddest thing about approaching it.

One person who replied that what's sad about aging isn't necessarily aging itself and is, instead, more about how our culture views it. I was happy to see that reply, and yet the individual did go on to say a couple of things that I sort of wish she hadn't thrown in (even though I know what she saying, and even though she was careful to include a remark about how there are exceptions to the kind of elderly people to whom she referred when making her point about aging. Even though I got her point about how culture views older people and aging, and even though I understood that she wasn't completely generalizing about older people, there still seemed to be one idea that struck me as missing. That idea is that older people are individuals, the same as anyone from any other age-group are and the same as anyone who falls under any particular group categorization is.

I think it's true that the way our culture so often views or treats older people is one of the saddest (but also most infuriating) things about being, or getting closer to being, elderly; and I think one of the most destructive things about common views of, or treatment of, elderly people is far more pervasive than so many people realize. It goes way beyond the fact that things like TV commercials don't seem to "get it" when trying to present older people, and it goes far beyond the fact that all a person has to do to start getting ads for planning his own funeral is to reach his fiftieth birthday. It also goes far beyond the fact that someone forty is often thought of as "old" by someone eighteen.

Even in a culture in which someone in his sixties or seventies can run for, and hold, public office; or who can continue to have as entertaining as a TV program as he's always had; or who can gain (as opposed to lose) respect in career like acting in movies or on Broadway; the idea that being older isn't particularly a sad thing really hasn't always sunken in with a lot of individuals in their day-to-day thinking, lives, interactions with, or views of people who are over that "certain age". Some people don't seem to even notice that there's such a thing as absolutely capable and vibrant and active older people. Some notice but believe those people are the exceptions and that "most" older people aren't like those exceptions.

The apparent reflections of culture (such as what we see in media) aren't always reflections of cultural views. Sometimes, of course, they are. Other times, what we see in places like media are attempts to shape cultural views. Either way, what we so often see as "our culture" isn't always a matter of either reflections or shaping of views. It's often a matter of the less visible things, and thinking, that go on in the day-to-day life and interactions between individuals in any little personal circle (which might be a family or might be someone's workplace, whether or not that workplace is the older person's own or the workplace of someone with whom he must interact).

Even in the time when so many Baby Boomers have already passed their sixtieth birthday (or soon will, which is the case with me), one reason there's such a deficit in so many people's idea of what it's really like to be 60 or over (or months away from it) is 1) that the only way to truly and fully understand how it feels to be that age is to have reached it, 2) because human beings of all ages are individuals that one size most often doesn't ever truly fit all, 3) there can be big differences (in experiences and in thinking) between individuals with few age-associated problems and those with many, 4) there can be big differences between the decades in which someone is in his sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond. (We certainly separate how we view and treat young people from birth to, say, twenty-five (when the brain and skeleton have reached complete maturity), and yet it's common for people to "lump together" older people at very different stages of aging. It doesn't help that this "lumping together" is so often done not just by people who haven't yet reached one age or another but is also often done by so many of those who have.

Neither does it help, I'm guessing, that as people face more and more ignorance and misunderstanding about aging as they gradually go from "officially not young" to "out-and-out" and unquestionably elderly (no matter how youthfully they think or how young they feel) into each new decade, they may learn from the start of aging that it can be futile to try to be understood by a lot of others (at least in a lot of ways).

If I could get a little more personal here I can make the point I'm making a little better:

The "youthful" sixty-year-old who's just adjusting to issues associated with dipping one's toe in the "waters of old-dom" (that's what I'm hoping I can be when that Big Six O rolls around) may be youthful and innocent enough to believe he deal with the misconceptions of anyone younger by simply addressing them and attempting to openly communicate.

See, that's what I'm doing here - deluding myself into believing that if enough people are open about how perfectly OK it can feel and be to leave the fifties behind; and believing that my one little voice will be enough to make at least a few people see heading-for-old-age as less "sad" and "miserable". Here's the thing though: I (and a lot of other people) have already tried "expelling misconceptions" about being in one's forties years ago, and it didn't do any good. A lot of people younger than forty just aren't going to get it until they get there and see it for themselves. It's not enough to be forty-five and not have any real signs of aging, and to have as much (sometimes more) energy as we've always had; and to tell people younger, "Look. I'm forty-five, and I've never been happier in my life." They'll just look at you and either think, "I don't believe you," or "Sure, you're happy because you don't mind being old. I will." Or, even if one happens to be reasonably youthful looking, thinking and acting; someone else is likely to think, "..but that's not everyone your age." (To that I'd say, "Nothing is really everyone at any age," but that's neither here-nor-there sometimes, or for some people.)

In any case, I tried convincing people that forties aren't a bad (or old) age to be back then; and one thing I learned was that it generally does no good to try to do that. When I hit fifty I tried to do the same thing with fifty; and if it didn't do any good in my forties, it REALLY didn't do much good when I'd hit fifty. It helped to know a lot of people my age or thereabouts, because they knew how OK (and even great) being in one's fifties can be. Some, however, had already given in the belief that fifties is old. Some even seemed to have started to build their identity on being "old and wise" (and therefore superior) compared to anyone who was under fifty.

It wasn't until about three weeks after my fiftieth birthday that I suddenly saw some fine lines under my eyes. At first I wasn't all that horrified because I figured I could "reduce the appearance of fine lines" with some kind of anti-aging make-up (or something). I can't say I've ever really run into the product that really does the kind of "reducing" that I want it to, but I digress.

Having discovered that those fine lines weren't about to disappear with the application of some magic potion from the local pharmacy, I did have one day (it happened to also be a very bad "Hair Day" to boot) when I asked myself if I could ever again show up in public "in this condition" (with that "condition" being having those fine lines under my eyes; after all, Bad Hair Days are easily (although never permanently) fixed.

On that one day when I actually wondered if I should ever show such a face out in public again, it didn't take me long to get back to reality and realize that people with fine lines (and worse) show their faces in public all the time (and it's absolutely fine). (Yes, I know I sound like a crazy person for sharing this one day-of-reckoning and insanity with you; but - hey - we're all entitled to a little bit of a "middle-aged" crisis. This one day was mine. I don't think that's too bad.

In any event, I settled reasonably comfortably into my fifties, keeping one one toe back in the "forties waters" ("After all, there's not a lot of difference between being, say forty-eight and fifty-one." I told myself I could "probably pass for forty-eight, maybe even forty-six" for a few years and ignored the fact that I was "technically" past my fiftieth birthday.

That's how I lived for a good long time (well, at least until I hit fifty-five) - keeping mind that I wasn't "all that much" beyond my forties, even if I was quite aware that "just passed my fiftieth birthday" isn't entirely accurate when one is fifty-five. I let that slide for the year when I was fifty-five, planning to drop the "just past" and instead say "past" (no "just") when I hit fifty-six. For the last three years I've gone with the "past-my-fiftieth-birthday" thing and the "in-my-fifties-thing"; although I'll admit to occasionally, and in some circumstances, going with the more generous "over-forty" thing. I tend not to like saying "over fifty" because somehow that seems to imply "out of one's fifties". Also, for some reason, I like to stay away from the "over-fifty-five" thing (mostly because using that one lets people know I'm not "just past" my fiftieth birthday).

If there's one thing I've learned from being "past my fiftieth birthday", it's that while being in our forties can seem only " kind of old" to younger people over a certain age, being over fifty just kind of hits a lot of younger people (and there are that many MORE younger people by then) as "really old". So, although I'd learned in my forties not to try to "enlighten the world" about how young forty really is, my fifties have taught me not to say exactly what my age is if I don't want someone else to start seeing me, or treating me, differently than before he knew "the ugly truth".

Still feeling every bit as young and as "the-same" as I've always felt, my fifty-something self has, in spite of having already seen how useless it is, continued to try to "enlighten" people about how old fifties (and forties) ARE NOT. So, at this point, I've been feeling pretty misunderstood (as far as age goes) by a whole lot of people for close to twenty years now. It doesn't help that the older we get, the more lack of understanding so many others have about whatever age we are. The quest to help the younger population realize that "old" isn't a bad thing not only goes on, but escalates.

One might say that we can't worry about what others think about us or say to, or about us; but that "one" would most likely still be young enough not to know how exhausting, frustrating, and depressing it can be to live in a world that's so often on a completely different page than we are on a day-to-day basis sometimes.

As I said, even though I've learned, over the last almost-two decades how futile it is to try to make SOME people understand that not being twenty isn't such a bad thing (and, in fact, that a lot of us older than that would NEVER want to trade in our lives or ages for being that age again); as I adjust to the idea of turning that Big Six O so soon, I'm still fighting the good fight when it comes to trying to get my message (and the message of so many others) out. Why? Because I still have enough energy to have that fight in me, and even because I'm youthful-thinking enough to believe that I just may be able to make a difference in this world.

Here's the thing, however: I can really see how another decade's-worth of living and/or some medical problems might start to erode away at some of the "youthful fight" and optimism I still seem to have. Even if my next decade remains free of serious medical problems I can see how another twenty years of "trying to get the message out" any time I feel that someone else "doesn't get it" when it comes to being older could easily lead to giving up bothering somewhere between now and then.

My mother, who had numerous health problems that included Rheumatoid Arthritis, was in her seventies when said, "The hard thing is that you still feel the same on the inside, and you still want to do the same things you've always done; but you can't. If you didn't want to do those things anymore it would be one thing, but you do and just can't. What's hard is that people don't understand that."

Losing independence was one of the things someone on that HubPages question mentioned. Losing indendence does stink. I can tell you that because I've lost my own more than once. I've been in a couple of car accidents, both of which left me with two limbs in a cast (in one case, with both legs in casts). I've done my short-term stint in a wheelchair before figuring out how not to let having two casts stop me from doing a lot of things on my own. I lost one kind of independence when I tried to get a divorce, and the court-system essentially caused me to lose my driver's license. Between not being able to work because of that and the bad economy, I wasn't able to find full-time employment, so I lost the independence that full-time income can bring. Here's what I've learned about losing our independence in one way or another: We end up being at least a little dependent on someone/something, and once we have no choice but to allow someone else into our personal "doings" and business, we have to hope whoever that is is someone who at least understands "where we're coming from", and also understands that he is not in our shoes and therefore is not in a position to ever truly understand "where we're coming from". What I've also discovered is that, for the most part, others don't understand either of those things (and maybe it would unfair to expect them to understand the former; with regard to the latter, that one shouldn't be so difficult to understand - and yet is apparently is for a lot of people).

When you're a youthful forty-one or fifty-four and have no choice but to allow others to be involved in your personal business/doings it can be challenging, but you most likely have the "mental strength" to graciously work with the situation without alienating whoever it is you must depend on too much (and without destroying relationships that are important to you). I can only imagine it must be that much more difficult to be eighty, have medical problems, and have to deal with people who not only don't get it, but think they know better than you.

Loss of independence aside, there are attitudes toward older people that are just demeaning. The elderly person who does something that people younger than he also does may have "bless his heart" said about his "adorable" efforts. Someone I know was talking about how her mother (in her seventies) had a boyfriend of roughly the same age. She said, "They're so cute." I found it so offensive to hear a middle-aged person referring to people who were simply a couple of decades or so older than she as "cute". There's nothing "cute" about a couple in their seventies who have found each other and decided to share their life. Older people who make a mistake or forget something, the same way people younger often do; are often seen as "messing up" because "now they're old". Something else people do is assume that if someone is "of a certain age" and is tired, being tired is the result of age. I've known so many people in their seventies and beyond who do far more than a lot of far younger people do. Sometimes, regardless of our age, we get tired because we haven't slept enough or have had a particularly busy day or week (month, etc.). It isn't always related to age, and yet so many people are so ready to assume it is.

Living in a culture that doesn't really "get it" when it comes to age isn't always the saddest thing about old age, or approaching it, at all. It's not great, but it doesn't always have to hit home or be personal. Living among people who don't "get it" is another thing. Why it is another thing is the fact that any time any of us lives in a situation where we are misunderstood and/or invisible, we pull inward and choose keeping to ourselves (in view of the fact that we're the only ones who truly understand us and know who, and what, we are as people).

With the gradual and increasing escalation of fighting off (or accepting) the misguided beliefs and words of others that can come as we age, it is far from ideal that at a time when people may most need some help from others, that's when we may discover that they long ago stopped trying to be understood in a world that so often cannot imagine what ("on Earth") it must be like to be of advanced age.

While this may sad, it may not be "the saddest thing", because so many elderly people are so much stronger and skilled with taking care of their own emotional needs (or at least living without the kind of support that would be ideal), simply because they have learned over the course of a lifetime.

The way I've experienced adding those decades with every ten birthdays, I've come to believe that we start out as little folks, going through all the developmental stages. Then we grow and spend some time figuring out our place in the world and universe, and what we want to do with our futures. At some point we reach what is, for the most part, being grown-up and through with the process of growing up but not with the process of growing.

From there we add layers of living and learning (which is why, of course, we often hear older people referred to as "having depth" or "substance"). What seems to work remarkably well (at least for those of us who don't have any particular "issues") is that as we add those layers, there is more of that "depth" and understanding that helps us deal with the challenges that come along with each year or event. In other words, both through what we've learned and knowing that some aspects of aging will be coming along, we're often prepared for any challenges that come with age. Also, we've had practice with learning how to cope and how to keep a postive attitude. We've often had practice with knowing, first-hand, that no matter how awful some situation is, we usually eventually find that we've gotten through, and past it. We've also learned, sometimes, how to live with what we won't likely ever truly get past.

Comparing losing my father when I was twenty-one to losing my mother when I was just past forty, I saw a very dramatic difference in how "ready" I was (even though nobody is usually truly ready to lose a mother). It was nonetheless a very different kind of experience with its own set of issues to be processed. It's not just the bad stuff or the losses that we get through better when we're ready. It can also be the good stuff. A teen may find something like sitting at the family with dinner or shopping with a parent as "lame". A more mature thirty-year-old may have "added enough layers" to see how nice spending time with a parent really is. The point is, as we live we grow and we become more ready to comfortably deal with some of the difficult things that life brings. That doesn't mean that some of difficult things associated with advanced age will ever be easy. It does mean, however, that dealing with some of them when we've gone through the process of going from young to not-so-young can often be a little easier because we've learned how to cope and considered what we'd do, or want, in any given situation over the years.

On the one hand, we can often very much remain interested in the same things we've always been interested in, or have the same values or ideas we've always had. On the other hand, no matter how old we get, what we're interested in or what we once valued or believed can change and grow with us. At the same time, we've often seen enough, and learned enough about life, that we come to one belief or another and can appear to be "stubborn" and "close minded". Being closed-minded isn't reserved for older people. Young people can be close-minded in their own way. Young people's closed-mindedness often comes from their youthful belief that "it can't happen to me". It can also come when someone young is so afraid to be closed-minded that he's reluctant to stand his ground (or isn't mature enough to even know what that ground is). Older people can be closed-minded, of course; but so often what appears to be "closed-minded" is really a matter of having seen something for themselves and having learned what someone younger hasn't yet learned.

One thing I learned when I was in my late thirties and just past forty was that no matter how completely grown up and well adjusted we believe we are at that age, we still have much to learn about the ages we haven't yet reached. When I was at that age, and my eldest son was a teen with the other two children not all that far from becoming teens; my mother had a situation with a twenty-year-old family member. In what I thought was my "complete maturity and proven good sense" I secretly had my own opinions about how she ought to handle the situation. So did my sister, who wasn't much different in age than I.

As my own children reached the age of twenty, and I discovered how, exactly, we feel about our children (and also how young twenty seems when you're in your fifties, rather than in your late thirties or early forties), I realized that I'd "known nothing" about my mother's choice to handle the situation she'd had. I saw the sense in her reason. I understood it. I understood, too, why someone would choose to live with a situation that was than what it should have been (even destructive) than to do "the right thing" or "the sensible thing" or the thing that would have made her life easier. Having lived long enough to have children who had passed their own twentieth birthdays, I finally saw that my mother had, in fact, done what was right - for her and for the other individual and in general.

When we're twenty-one we may think we generally know everything. When we're forty-one we can tend to think we REALLY know everything we need to know. No matter what the issue is, how we view it as we continue to add those layers to who/what we are can change.

Something else that can color how we think, or what choices we make, is each experience that is painful for us. The person who has had a lot of medical care may reach a point where he doesn't want to be "picked at" any longer. The person who lives in physical pain may find a way to make that physical pain more bearable, even if that way isn't the healthiest thing for him to do. The person who has had some kinds of loss (and most older people have had their share) may see some things as "less important" than they once did.

Something very valuable in growing past our youth can be that we start to have a better perspective of things, and we can start to truly understand what's important in this life. When we see what's important we tend to also appreciate it if/when we have it. Also, when we've had a lot of practice "surviving" we can tend to know, and have our self-confidence enhanced by, having seen how good we are at surviving.

There can be a wholeness in being old enough not to have our future be mostly ahead of us. I recall worrying that I may never meet someone to marry and build a family with. When I met someone and got married I then worried that I may not be able to build the family. Once babies were on the way I worried that they may be born with serious medical issues. Since babies are most vulnerable to some illnesses, I couldn't even let myself think about some of the things I worried about when it came to my babies and younger children. Since we don't know that we'll get our children to adulthood and to be good people who don't have a lot of "issues", there was that worry that came with having children who weren't grown. As nice as it may be to imagine one's blank-slate future, there's also something incredibly "wholeness-producing" in seeing the part of our "book of life" that we've already read, and in seeing that (even things haven't been perfect) we no longer have to worry about some of the things we once did. There's something incredibly rewarding in seeing our grown families, knowing our families will continue to grow as new additions are added, and thinking, "Wow. Things are good, and I'm so thankful for so many things."

As children move away from those earlier "baby years", and we see that happening; there is that feeling that it's bittersweet and that we wish we could keep them babies and preschoolers forever. As they keep surprising us with either always still kind of being the same "them" or else with becoming "more and more" as people; our love for, and relationship with, them grows as they (and we) grow. When your child is three you can't imagine him ever being thirty, but when you've traveled the road to thirty alongside him, you can't ever imagine feeling bad that he couldn't stay three forever.

Aging isn't just about whether or not we have families, however, It's about how we grow in whatever we do (or don't do) in our lives. We can stay that same "us" we've always been in so many ways, and yet we can discover that we've changed our ideas about one thing or another, including what's important to us.

When I was twenty years, if I'd ever looked in the mirror and see the same fine lines I saw after hitting fifty, I would have been far more horrified than I was when I could think, "Oh well, I'm lucky I didn't see them in my forties." When we're in our twenties (or thirties) we can't particularly imagine what it would be like to look in the mirror and see an eighty-year-old face; or we can't particularly imagine how it would feel to need a walker or an assisted-living facility. The fact is, it would be horrible for someone in his twenties or thirties to have to deal with something like that (although younger people with medical problems often do have to, and manage quite well). People who are older have often come around to very much being comfortable with some of the more difficult things that can come with age, but that don't always come to everyone.

Being independent isn't always about whether or not we can walk downstairs without a cain or someone's arm to help support us. Being independent isn't always about independence that shows up on the outside. Provided an elderly person hasn't run into problems that have affected his clarity of thinking, independence is something that some people can only keep on the inside. Understanding that it's there, no matter how dependent someone may be on the outside, is a first step in knowing that an elderly person may not be anywhere near as "dependent" as some younger people assume they are.

Something else that would help a lot of elderly people would be if more people understood, exactly, what "respect" is. Many people fall short when it comes to understanding "respect". They may respect an elderly person as far as wanting to treat him very respectfully goes, but not as an equal (or even someone who knows better). They may value, treasure, love, or care a lot about the elderly person; but they may just not be able to grasp the idea that that individual (again, if he's without serious medical problems that affect his cognitive abilities substantially) is every bit as grown-up, capable, and worthy of being seen (and treated) as an adult. Even the person with minor mental decline can very much still be the same person he's always been "on the inside" - only he has a challenge that he's dealing with. A whole lot of elderly people don't have any signs of things like memory loss at all, however, I've known more than my share of seventies and eighties friends (and one amazing ninety-plus friend) who have taken care of a whole lot more other people than some younger ones whose lives are so busy they don't have time for too many other people.

In the interest of respecting elderly people as "the same as everyone else" , not all elderly people are wise or nice. Some are stupid, and some are just complete and utter jerks - just the way younger people. Some of them are bitter old people who were bitter young people several decades ago. They don't deserve a pass just because they're old, and they don't deserve a medal for getting to be that age. I think of the lyrics from the song from La Cage Aux Folles, "I Am What I Am" (I love that song), and of the lines, "I am what I am. I don't want praise. I don't want pity." Those lyrics apply to a lot of people in this world, and elderly people are among those to whom the lyrics so often apply.

The interesting thing about us human beings is that we tend to generally pay attention to what those older than we are say until we get to be adults, at which time we tend to pay far less attention to what those older than us say. At twenty we tend to think that people forty "don't know" (or "don't know how things are now"). At forty, we can see that a lot of young people "don't know", but we also tend to forget how much we so often really did know when we were twenty. At forty, we do to those older than we what twenty-year-olds do to us. We can think we're at the "height of knowing" when we're a reasonably young sixty, but if we've been paying attention through the years, we'll at least know what we still have much to discover, and understand, about those of are older than we are. As with all prejudice, ignorance, and bigotry (even the kind that's not really intended to be malicious), it would be great if everyone, regardless of age, could set aside all preconceived notions about other people, or about groups of people, and just assume the other person is worthy of being viewed as an "equal".

Depending on the individual and on the age, there's no doubt that there's often a higher number of sad things that can go on in an elderly person's life. I don't underestimate the difficulty that elderly people can run into, even if people can generally be more "ready" or more prepared for those difficult things as we age. Difficult things aren't the exclusive domain of elderly people, of course; but there's no doubt that as age goes up, so too do the chances of more of those difficult or challenging things becoming part of life. There's also no doubt that knowing one's future has become shorter and shorter isn't the happiest of things to think about. (When I hit fifty I decided to just assume I'll live to be at least a hundred and not worry about a future that was equal in number of years I'd already lived. As I said, we often find ways of dealing with some of the issues associated with getting older.) Something else that can make the idea of not remaining around forever can be that older people have lost enough people they've loved, and so often don't feel the same about not being here any longer as they once did. Regardless of what someone may believe with regard to what does or doesn't exist beyond life on Earth, when people have lost enough family and friends they often come to have a far more pragmatic thinking about whatever does, or doesn't exist after life here; and regardless of what they believe, there's always that awareness of whatever does or doesn't exist after here, it's where so many of those we've loved are now.

Also, after seeing enough years of enough people suffering with illnesses or worse, people of a certain age have often become acutely aware of the fact that there can be far worse things than no longer being here on Earth. With maturity often comes not really caring a whole lot about how long we live, and caring about the wellbeing and futures of those we love. One of those worries I mentioned awhile back, and that's related to the kind of things we worry about when we're younger, is the worry that we may die before our children are grown up. Not dying before they're grown up can be something for which we're so thankful it can make dying any time after they're all grown seem a lot less important.

Even with some of the (shall I say) "less than delightful" aspects of advancing age; from where I am right now (which is obviously "approaching old age"), I think a whole lot (certainly not all, by any means) of sad things associated with advanced age are what we must see happen in the lives of those who are elderly around us, rather than something they, themselves, experience as "a sad thing". What may be more encouraging to those of us who see sadness in the aging of those we love, or just those around us, to keep in mind that how we see some things is very different from how the elderly person, himself, sees some things.

I am not in a position to offer a position about the saddest thing about being of truly advanced age, because I'm not there yet. I can offer my thoughts on getting pretty close to old age, and I have to say that with the exception of medical conditions that crop up (but that always aren't limited to only the elderly), I don't really see much that's sad about old age, itself. So much of old age is no different from "young age", and for everyone who has more than his share of sad things in his advanced age there's a lot of other people who pretty much get to life their lives without a whole lot of sadness.

As I sit here not all that far from old age (but probably farther away from it than I, in all my "youthfulness" tend to realize), the one thing that strikes me as sad is the fact that somewhere between my forties and now, the world managed to send me the message that it doesn't understand how young we feel, and are, so much longer than so many people seem to realize.

Since I passed my fiftieth birthday I've been OK with it among friends and relatives, but in my dealings with people in my online writing I've never been able to just say exactly how old I am. Because I've wanted any readers to understand that I'm not "just pulling stuff out of the clear, blue, sky", I've wanted to make it clear that I'm old enough to have grown kids (or when I first started writing online, to have "just about grown" kids). Aside from generally being an honest person, I didn't want anyone thinking I was twenty-five years and writing some of the things I write. I couldn't, however, be more honest than to say I had grown kids or else to eventually say that I'd seen my fiftieth birthday. Why? Because I knew there was a good chance people would start seeing and treating me differently.

Online or off, there's a part of me that's kind of proud to be the "kind of fifties" person I am. While I don't delude myself into believing I "think the same" as younger people (because I don't and wouldn't want to), I'm glad my kids (for example) can see that someone my age isn't "ancient" and feeble. There's another part of me, however (and a big part), that has seen the change in how people see or treat me if I actually put that "big number" that is my age into words. I don't fool myself into thinking I've fooled others into believing I'm forty or thirty. I've never tried to fool anyone and wouldn't want to. At the same time, I've so often become aware that it's one thing for others to not have that exact number that represents age, and to instead see only a "middle-aged person of some age". It's another when they hear the number and seem to only see, or think about, that from the time they do.

We're told of how confident and sure ourselves we get with age (and that's yet one message that's not always entirely correct, if it's correct at all in some cases). In my head, I've always told myself, "Look, your age isn't something to be ashamed of. You ought to just say it and let people think what they're going to think." Then, however, I'll again remind myself that it's not that I care what anyone else thinks, and is, instead, that I care about then having trouble dealing with someone who suddenly sees, treats, and talks to as if I'm no longer the person I was before I confirmed that number. You would think a woman my age would be self-confident enough, and able to deal with people enough, not to worry about that. Yet, after beginning to get that "old message" from the world from the time I was in my early forties, and after getting that message more and more as my fifties have progressed; I have to say that even someone who is generally as confident as I've always been in so many ways can discover that those messages from the world can (and apparently do) take a toll on our self-confidence. It does't help in job interviews when the interviewer is not allowed to ask how old we are but when that person looks at the resume and notices "year graduated". It's often in job interviews where the dramatic and silent shift in the other person takes place immediately after spotting that particular piece of information.

It's not just what went on in job interviews (before I gave up looking for full-time work, and instead becoming self-employed). It's those "plan-to-your-funeral" mailings and mailings for hearing aids that I get just because I'm on some list for "old people". (I don't want the "bleeping" funeral and hearing-aid mailings. I don't want the AARP mailings, the ones for elderly-living places, or even the ones about something I can buy, or do, "for my grandchildren". I don't HAVE any grandchildren yet, and I'm really happy that I don't! I get to stay young-feeling that much longer.)

Feeling afraid to actually tell people my exact age is something that's really bothered me for the last few years. (Before that, I'd only lived with it for a few years, so I guess I sort of thought it was kind of acceptable just to do the most comfortable and safe-feeling thing and not mention my exact age.) More and more over the last few years, though, I've been bothered by the fact that time has continued to go on, and I apparently haven't grown any braver when it comes to just saying my age and letting the chips fall where they may (and there will be chips to fall because I've always seen that they fall for age-numbers a lot smaller than my own).

In any event, it's been bothering me more and more over the last year. Still, when the matter of age has cropped up somewhere like online, I've never quite been able to make myself just say how old I am. All the while, I've kept thinking about how if something this "silly" is enough to make me so worried about just being candid about my age, what other age-related messages that are sent to truly elderly people have similar, or worse, impact on a person's sureness in his dealings with others? The way I've been seeing it, this telling-my-exact-age thing is just the beginning of a number of other, similar, issues that I'll be running into as I got into the next decade and any that follow it.

The fact is, without even reaching my sixtieth birthday, if I'm honest with my otherwise confident and self-assured self I'll admit that I'm not just worried about confirming my age for anyone who may now just be seeing me as a "generic, middle-aged, person". I'm actually afraid of it. Why? Because I've already been dealing with so much of what people don't seem to get about the fifties. Not only am I already tired of, and frustrated by, it; but I just know that saying "Sixty" is only going to be that much worse. When it comes to this particular issue, I'm like an insecure fourteen-year-old who is afraid to admit something to peers because I know it will make my life miserable (or more miserable). Am I on my way back to that second childhood so many people think older people get to (but that I find an offensive concept)? I reassure myself that I'm not "on my way" anywhere. I am, in so many ways, very much in the exact same place that I was when I was fourteen.

I'm convinced that one reason some grandparents seem to relate better to their grandchildren than the grandchildren's parents sometimes do is that those years around fifty and beyond do have their way of making us aware, not just of what's important in life, but of how rotten it feels to feel misunderstood, underestimated and/or invisible more than any person ought to be made to feel that way.

It's not just me. My family members and friends who are around my age have said very much the same things I have here. The funny thing is, if someone younger were to sense a little bit of lack of confidence in someone fifty (even forty) or older, that younger person might assume it was living life with fine lines (and any other signs of aging) that shakes a person's confidence. They would never assume that someone so otherwise sure of himself, and of that age, had been driven into insecurity by attitudes and misconceptions about age. There are, of course, people who are proud of their "big number" and who don't mind setting themself apart as "old" (versus young or middle-aged). These are often people who don't want to just "play the age card". They're happy to just count themselves into the "wise, old-person" game and be happy for whatever advantages they find in that game. Other people, however, don't want to draw some line on the "them" they've always been and cross that line into something that's too different from what's ahead of it. Some people don't want "the world" to define what their age really is or really means. Instead, they want to define it themselves.

Maybe one problem is that if a person doesn't go - hook, line, and sinker - into the whole "old-age (and "proud of it") identity that someone else has defined for him, his own definition of who/what he, and his age, are goes unheard by anyone who doesn't think someone over a certain age has anything to say that's worth listening to.

No, I can't say what the saddest thing about being seventy or eighty (or older) is. I can't really even say how it feels to have already reached the sixtieth birthday. I do think it's sad, however, that our culture (and a lot of individuals within it) has a way of viewing age in a way that can be every bit as destructive to self-esteem as those messages that are sent to young girls about beauty and body image can be to them. What's sad is also the fact that we can think we've safely made it to adulthood with a healthy self-esteem and sureness about interacting with others in this world, only to discuss that such self-esteem and sureness aren't necessarily things about which we'll never again to worry about not having.

I'm a grown-up (most of the time), and I'll figure out a way of dealing with a world that so often doesn't get how OK (even perfectly fine) it can be to have reached a certain age. Maybe it's taken me years to finally realize that the way to deal with misconceptions about, and prejudice and bigotry toward, aging isn't to keep my own, exact, age something of a mystery (even if there's really no hiding it anyway). To again refer to the song, "I Am What I Am", I think of the line, "It's my world, and it's not a world I have to hide in." As long as I keep feeling as if my exact age is best kept a shameful secret I'll always remain driven into hiding by a culture (but also individuals in that culture) that really could use more people to speak up about the ignorance about age that exists.

In fewer than six months I'll be hitting that sixtieth birthday. It's time I find a way to come to grips with being candid about it; particularly since over the last year or so, in my wish to be honest, I've already admitted to being "over fifty-five". (How the heck much difference should it really make if someone thinks I'm fifty-six versus sixty? We "all know" that everyone over forty already "doesn't know anything" and doesn't have anything to say that's worth paying any attention to.) I know nobody else cares how old I am . It's all about having seen how once that number is out there people are less likely to take what I say seriously; and even if they take it seriously they'll see it as something "someone old said" and that "doesn't necessarily apply".

What I find kind of interesting (to me, anyway - not necessarily to anyone else) is that I'm becoming more and more aware of the fact that my fifties will soon be over, and I'll never have said exactly how old I was while I was in them; I feel as if I've had this "shame" for all that time. I don't want my fifties to pass without my ever feeling comfortable about how old I am. While I've always been almost completely comfortable with being in my fifties, there's always been that one little aspect of it (that not feeling brave enough to say exactly how far into my fifties I really am) that's been nagging at me. While the number of words here may seem to suggest that I take age far more seriously than I do, or that I'm far more "plagued by" by own than I'll admit; honestly, it's not as big a problem as my discussion might seem to suggest. It's not from being "within my own issue" that I see any sadness to my own age. It's when I step outside myself, and ask myself how I'd feel if I knew someone else had even that little shred of "shame" about his own age. How I'd feel about that would be that it's wrong, and that nobody should feel even just a little ashamed of his own age.

What causes that sense of shame? It's not that I see any shame in age. It's that I know others can so often so grossly underestimate people who aren't young, and as a result talk to them, or treat them, inappropriately. Not always being able to fight off being on the receiving end of that kind of thing is where, I guess, I have some sense of shame. For strong who has always been capable and strong (and proud of it), there is a sense of shame in not being able to stop being underestimated, or to stop "the real you" from being invisible to other people. Just as in the case of psychological or emotional abuse, being viewed or talked to as somehow at least a little inferior by someone who can't imagine that "older" could be "equal" and/or even "superior", having trouble stopping others from treating us as "dumber" or "weaker" than we really are works away at our self-esteem. It's not that we start to believe what they think we are. It's that, by virtue of letting them get away with, we are made to feel helpless.

Of course, we could pick a fight with anyone and everyone who "doesn't get it" when it comes to being over a certain age, but who, in reality, really wants to do that?

Here's one of the more harmless examples: A month of so ago I went into a gift shop and bought something. The young woman was, I'm guessing, in her late twenties or early thirties. She knew her job, and she appeared to take it very seriously. She came across as a "librarian type" (sorry, about the stereotype, librarians out there). In other words, she didn't come across like an overt bimbo at all. To be perfectly candid, however, there was something about her that didn't make her come across as "the brightest bulb in the bunch" either. I don't want to be mean about her because she was nice. In fact, she was syrupy sweet to the point where I suspected it had to be complete and utter phoniness. Fine. Twice during my brief visit there, this individual condescendingly called me, "Hon".

Here was the problem: I didn't know if this individual was just so stupid she didn't have a clue about the fact that calling someone so much older than she is "hon" isn't, shall I say, cool; or this individual was a passive-aggressive little jerk with a personality disorder and a need to quite knowingly put other people down down "nicely". Neither did I know if she has her condescending attitude toward everyone, toward all people older than she, or just to me. Because I didn't know any of these things, and because I was taken more aback than one might think someone my age should be, I said my polite "thank you" as I made my purchase and fumed inside to the point that I wished I could have just slapped across the head for her fake, syrupy-sweet, behavior and two condescending "hon's".

Giving someone like this individual the benefit-of-the-doubt by assuming she's just not that brightest bulb in the bunch can see like the only thing to do. That doesn't stop me from feeling angry at having had someone make such a condescending remark when I KNOW she's at least intelligent enough to realize that I'm substantially older than she. Besides, she's not the only one who has ever called someone older "hon" or "sweety". I've seen nurses call perfectly capable, intelligent, but elderly patients use those terms on them. I know they're aiming to be kind, but - really - if some of those nurses were a few decades older they'd never be that condescending to people who are perfectly capable, even if elderly and/or sick.

In situations when people are condescending toward someone older than they are; sure, it's possible to speak up and put them in their place. Here's the thing, though: I don't want my fairly recent introduction to "more advanced age" to be the beginning of a start down the road to being a cantankerous, old, jerk. I'm happy that I'm still "the same me that I've always been". I don't want to change that, and I don't want to let getting older change me in that way. I shouldn't have to, and I wouldn't have to if the world could do a better job of getting it when it comes to people over a certain age. In the meantime, and from where I am right now, it seems to me that one of the saddest things about approaching advanced age is the fact that the relatively few years I have left of still being "reasonably youthful" (sort of, and in some ways) must be clouded by the increasing awareness that even if I don't change a whole lot the world will often treat me as if I have. Worse, it may treat me as if I'm far less than I really am as a capable, clear-thinking, strong, adult.


Note: If this Hub disappears you'll know that I've slipped out of my temporary moment of bravery and back into my inappropriate insecurity about being so close to sixty. If it doesn't you'll know that my former, younger, more secure, self.

.

What discussion about aging would be complete without the including the following song...

So often when I'm really taking the time to think about the matter of getting older, someone about whom I don't think of all that often tends to come to mind. That person is the young woman with whom I'd grown up, and who was my closest friend throughout our growing-up years and into early adulthood. Silly as it sounds, when she and I were young teens we decided to sing the following song together as we waited for a bus. We didn't sing at the top of our lungs or anything like that. We kept our voices low; but because we both found this song very meaningful I guess, for some reason, the idea to sing it together seemed like a good one in at the time . What can I say? Teenage girls can be silly. (As I just wrote the words, "what can I say" it struck me that my friend wrote those words on the back of her wallet-sized, high-school-graduation, photo when we were exchanging them.

My friend didn't live to have to worry about turning sixty years old because three weeks before both our twenty-first birthdays a drunk and speeding driver hit the car in which I was riding and that my friend was driving. She didn't get to see her twenty-first birthday, let alone her fortieth or sixtieth.

It doesn't take a lot of math-doing for you to see how long ago it was that this took place; and as I said, I don't think of my friend very often much at all these days. (I did for a long time, but no longer.) Still, I can tell you that when I think about those fine lines that show up under our eyes once we've hit one birthday or another I cannot be anything but incredibly grateful to have had the chance to even have to worry about aging at all.

Some young people get to live with the youthful belief that "it won't happen to me" for a good, long, time. As far as I can tell, some people even get to be not-so-young and still have the luxury of having that outlook on life. I didn't have that luxury because I learned younger than a person should learn that "it CAN happen to me". Worse for me, it was only months after the accident that I my father died at only sixty-two years old. The day the nurse at the hospital said, "I'm sorry. He's gone," the very first thing that came to my mind was, "He's never going to see my children."

Not a whole lot younger than my father was when he died, and already older than my mother was when she was widowed in her early fifties; I have, in fact, looked at clouds from a whole lot of different sides over the years. To be honest, I can't really say that "I really don't know life at all" because, having lived this long and looked at clouds, sun, and a whole lot of other things from any number of sides; I feel like I know life a heck of a lot better than I did when I was much younger. In any case, and for any number of reasons, approaching "advanced age" isn't such a bad thing.

The following video is one I couldn't leave off this Hub, and it's for Michelle.