Aging

When you hear the word “Ageism,” what does it conjure up? For me, I think of employment discrimination against people with a few more wrinkles. Or I think about women in Hollywood who aren’t cast as romantic leads after age forty (“Sexism” rears its ugly head there as well).

In English, age is an identity as in “I am 60 years old,” just like “I am a man” or “I am Asian.” Unfortunately, age is an identity that often brings shame. A friend recently said she was “65 years young,” as if being “old” is a curse. I get it. It can be a curse, but it can also be a blessing.

Thank you to so many of you who send me gems like this one from Wisdom Well subscriber, Michael Louie, who found this lovely poem written by Mario de Andrade (San Paolo 1893-1945) who was a poet, novelist, essayist and musicologist. He was one of the founders of Brazilian modernism.

If you’re turning 60 this year, I can relate. I experienced my 60th turn last Halloween. As I wrote about the process of turning 60 in this post dated around my birthday, this is a venerable age as we’ve gotten five auspicious rotations of the Zodiac.

What a treat it was to have TED speaker Ashton Applewhite (and her colleague Virginia Hamilton and husband Bob Stein) join us in Baja for Sabbatical Sessions the past couple weeks to converse about how we end ageism. Her book “This Chair Rocks” and her online clearinghouse Old School are foundational to our process of creating “cognitive liberation” around the subject of age.

The past few years have shown a marked plateau and even decline in longevity in the U.S. such that we’re quickly falling behind the developed world. Even so, I have confidence our long-term longevity will continue to rise like the rest of the world. We may have gotten the quantity (length of life) right, but now it’s time to give more attention to the quality (depth of life).

I learned this concept in business school and can still recite the definition: “the present value of the future cash flows attributed to the customer during his/her entire relationship with the company.” While I appreciate the premise as it suggests a long-term, less transactional approach to our customer relationships, it also has fueled Madison Avenue’s fixation on marketing to young people because they have more years ahead of them.

There are probably older icons you’re likely to mention in response to the question this blog post asks. You might have answered Helen Mirren, Sophia Loren, or Madonna. Maybe Lauren Hutton, Diana Ross, Dame Judi Dench, or Cher.

I tend to steer clear of the clickbait site BuzzFeed, but this particular listicle caught my attention. Their clickbait title was clearly a challenge: If You Recognize Any of These 35 Pictures, I'm Sorry, You're Officially Old. Well, I clicked. And, yes, I’m old.

Earlier this month, 51-year-old Peter Mel put himself in a club with only one member: riding the “Biggest Barrel” and the “Biggest Wave” at Northern California’s Mavericks winter surf break captured in this article.