Old People

[abcrystcats]

What happens when you get old?

I see my parents, my uncle, and various other people who were once filled with life and action and a sense of purpose. They've died out. They've used their energies it seems, and they are now intent on very limited spheres of influence. My uncle has written, perhaps, 10 books. He began the new one on the very fringes of the last one, without pausing to send the last one to a publisher.

My uncle talks with great wisdom about the horrors of the current government and our President. He knows what needs to be done, but the last time the subject of doing it came up he expressed his fear of the consequences of action.

My father is worse. He knows very little of what's going on in the world, and prefers to bury himself in ancient history -- the more trivial the history, the better he feels.

Is the wisdom of old age really despair? I see my predecessors, all intent on ignoring the evils of the world, doing little or nothing, and I wonder. The older I get, myself, the more hopeless everything seems. Do you believe in God more or less as you get older? The older I get, the less I believe in God. I can only guess at it, but I think that God is something close to a fairy tale for my father and uncle.

And if old people feel hopeless, then what's the point for the rest of us?

When I talk to my uncle I feel like screaming: "But you KNOW! Why don't you DO something?" When I talk to my father the inner scream is more: "But you COULD know, why don't you open your eyes?" And I can think of other older people who are very well aware but prefer to spend their latter years immersed in their personal pleasures and trivial pursuits.

If this is the example they set for us, then what are we to do?

I'm not really sure what I am asking here, but one thing I would really like to know is why the older (supposedly wiser) people don't try to change things. And if they don't act on behalf of their beliefs, then why do they think the younger people are going to do it? Or don't they care?

[knip]

i think there's danger in trying to think like an older person through a younger person's viewpoint...i can think of many reasons why i might want to buy a little house in the country beside a tiny stream and no sounds of cars and very little contact with the outside world when i am older...some are:

- not my world to fix anymore, and if i tried, it wouldn't be in the way most folks want it these days anyway

- i'm tired, and now it's MY time

- no one listened to me for the last 60 years, why are they gonna start now?

- maybe i was wrong


i don't know...my father seems to have tired eyes...he divorced my mother 25 years ago and remarried to a woman 19 younger than he...now she's 55ish, full of piss and vinegar, and he's 74 and tored and just wants to weed his garden, drink rum and cokes, and smoke his menthols (except he just quit, the fucker...now i am feeling pressured to follow him)

he doesn't have the maniac glint in his eyes anymore, but he gets it back when he sees me or my kids...now this could have something to do with the fact that we are the only ones that visit him, but i think it's because he sees the future in us, and maybe sees the future is good...this doesn't mean he is giving up on changing things...it likely means he just doesn't care anymore...no his job, mon...

but like your uncertainty of what you were asking, i am equally uncertain as to what my original point was

[abcrystcats]

Yes ... I actually think all your possible responses to my thread are entirely correct.

Older people think all those things. They've got the wisdom but they are tired of acting, so they don't.

I suppose that's how we will all get, eventually, so what's the point? What are we working for? We work to get to the point where working for stuff just doesn't seem worth it?? Huh?

Isn't that death?

[knip]

or maybe wisdom is merely realizing one doesn't have all the answers

my experience is that most younger people think they have the answers...then they age and either mellow and see the answers are kind of elusive (that's me!) or they become more and more adamant they know the answer (that isn't wisdom!)


generalizing, to be sure


and my grandparents weren't all that full of wisdom

[sooZen]

Hummm, how old is old? 50? 60? 70? 80? or beyond?

I'll tell you from my experience that at a certain point, you get tired, your body gets tired, your mind gets tired and all you want to seek is rest, a little peace and quiet. Otherwise, we can go out and joust windmills thinking they are dragons for as long as we live.

The young have the energy, the enthusiasm, the spunk to try and change the world and also, the naivite' to think that the world is not perfect, just as it is.

Change comes about on a personal level and not from assailing those beyond oneself to change because we have no control over what others may do or think. If one wants the world to change, they must change their world and doing 'by example' is the best teacher.

So living one's life at the best of one's abilities, with a consciousness of the moment you are in is all one can do and in the meantime, give us old folks some rest. Hah!

Peace,
SooZen

[lescaret]

My uncle has written, perhaps, 10 books. He began the new one on the very fringes of the last one, without pausing to send the last one to a publisher .... When I talk to my uncle I feel like screaming: "But you KNOW! Why don't you DO something?"

Hmmm, don't you think that you're uncle, having written 10 books (which I take to mean published 10 books), DID do something?

It's not about "old people" (whatever that is - as BB said "Hummm, how old is old? 50? 60? 70? 80? or beyond? "). Age is irrelevent.

Life wears some people out, others not.

As the cliche goes, "You're as old as you allow yourself to be" (or something like that.)

It's always easy to reduce the life span to: you're born, you suffer, then you die.

But really, where's the fun in that? So terribly irresponsible to perceive life as a diaper, and so unimaginative.

I'd say stop complaining about the "old people", offer them love and support as they approach their deaths, and in the meantime, while you're cascading around the planet in a relatively (I hope!) healthy body, make somebody laugh, feed someone a homecooked meal, plant a garden, blow up a balloon, tidy up the sidewalk, whatever.

[abcrystcats]

Sorry, Lescaret, I neglected to mention that he hasn't gotten one book published. I guess I don't blame him for that, it's certainly not his fault. And perhaps he's just given up on the fruitless process of submitting to publishers when they aren't interested.

So many activities just seem to me to be useless action. And I question why so many older people choose to spend their time engaging in them. Probably it's my lack of imagination that's at work here more than anything else.

I appreciate Buddhabitch's response. People just get tired. You can't change the world, and LIVING is hard enough, in and of itself. I am quickly getting to that same point. I am looking for some kind of motivation or hope or inspiration outside of myself, and I am wondering why I can't find it anywhere.

The answer is probably just what B said.

And you're right. It's got nothing to do with old people, in particular. I am not old and I feel the same way.

As for suggesting that I go out and do something nice for someone else -- sorry, but all I want is some peace and quiet.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Cat:


Since you knew me when I was younger, perhaps what I am about to say will have a bit more meaning.

This summer, I will turn 60. My fifties are over, and 60 is old. I have begun to measure how many years might remain, and decide how I want to spend them, where my energy will be expended.

Part of what you're speculating about has to do with what I call captivity. The pressure to earn a living, raise children ( for many people -- I opted out on that one), scrape and grovel your way to some kind of material comfort.

Once that comfort is procured, what then?

The older folks ( people my age and ten or fifteen years older) have, in many cases, run out of things to do. They park themselves in front of the tv and complain about their inevitably deteriorating health.

Oh, it's easy to name extraordinary exceptions, like Pablo Casals doing a world tour when he was 90. Casals lived to age 97 and was musically active until the end of his life.

http://www.cello.org/cnc/casals.htm

Likewise the wonderful English writer Victor S. Pritchett. At 96, when he died, he was still writing:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/11/ ... pstein.htm


But these are, of course, exceptions.

If one's mind is still "intact", older age can be , as Eliot said, a time to "explore."

Martha Graham and Georgia O'Keefe found it so, having long ago "lost" their feminine "beauty." And gained another kind of marvelous beauty.

But poor Iris Murdoch lost her mind to Alzheimer's and didn't even know she was a famous philosopher and novelist in the last year of her life. John Bayley ( her husband) wrote a moving memoir of her transformation, "Elegy for Iris.".

http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/aut ... 13,00.html


I am looking forward to sixty and beyond. Because I ( along with mtmynd) am one of the oldest folks on this board, I find the struggles and musings of the younger members enlightening, reminiscent of my own at their age.

You once said that the person you knew at the head of the class those many years ago wasn't someone who compromised easily.

I think that, mentally and artistically ( a word I hate), that is still
true to a great extent.

But the body ( and sometimes the mind, too) compromises for you, as it did for Iris Murdoch.

As Samuel Johnson prayed ( and it is my prayer too)" Take my body if you wish, Lord, but spare my Understanding."



Zlatko

[judih]

how do i know i'm older?
i see my kids growing taller than me.
they laugh at my shoe size
and they are amazed when i know the lyrics to 'their' jimi hendrix songs.

time is so bizarre and crops up in such strange ways.

other than those strange deja vu situations, i still feel a lot like the 9 year old who earnestly wanted to do the best she could and write and perform and create and laugh with people who understood her.

what is age?

What once was 'old' is now younger than i am. The old neighbour next door is now 40 years older and she's still lively and lovely.

When does 'old' begin?
What's wrong with certain people? The same thing that was always wrong with them.

We get our basic personality and deal with it. (please excuse the 'we' - i'm using it cause i'm on a roll, not cause i believe i'm speaking for everybody - okay, what the hell, i'll say 'i')

i get my basic personality pretty close to birth and from then on i make the most of it, depending on circumstance. i get positive feedback, i continue. i get a lot of negative feedback, i might adjust or turn down the volume, or whatever.

lucky for me that i got few obstacles put in my way, i just bulldozed through life. That kind of momentum helped me through crises, guided me to find ways to express fear, terror, etc in order to let myself keep on going.

There's lots more to explore, and to try. What's old? i don't know yet.

What's wrong with some 'old' people? don't know. But if they didn't think it important to recharge themselves after expending energy, then they will no doubt experience burn-out fairly soon.

Recycling the joy of life is an important activity - more important than taking geri-wonder vitamins (sic)

[Arcadia]

Well, I felt more alive the generation of my grandparents than the one of my parents (besides the first ones lived till 80 or 90 and a lot of the other generation didn´t reach the 60).
I´m (now talking seriously & according with Dante) in the middle of the road and I´m more confused than when I was fifteen years ago but also more peaceful.
I enjoy the pristine vision of the younger people and I like also the vision of people that are near 50 now and that they were young in the seventies.
I think that everyone of us knows somehow what we have to do.

[knip]

four years ago i spent a sponsored year in university to finish the last year of a baccalaureate degree i had spent ten years working towards on my own time

first day i went to the 'mature student's lounge'...i only had to go once and hear older folks taling about the younger generation and how stupid they were to know i would learn nothing by isolating myself

so i integrated into my school peers, which were primarily about 22-26 years old, in comparison to my 40 years

i found similar attidues, differing attitudes, but primarily, folks who were willing to listen/discuss

and that's all we can ask for from anybody, regardless of age



i also met many folks of my age or older who had come to the same conclusion about the /mature student's lounge'

[Lightning Rod]

I'm glad I never graduated from college
that was my excuse to keep on studying
being old means you cease to be part of the world

When that happens to me, take me out and shoot me.

[WIREMAN]

Just got in from doing a job I've been doing since I was a teen and now I'm just turned 52, sure I'm not the same runnin' rebar humpin' stud I used to be, but to even give an instants thought to the age thing is silly. In the big picture of existence what the fuck does a difference of 20 years matter, all ya have is now and ya go with it, to try and analyze the fact of the cycle of life is pure folly.
"Just Live!"

[anniefay]

I am in my 60s and I have never really felt my actual age. When I was a kid I thought myself extremely mature for my years; now I know I shall forever remain young at heart, looking at the "elderly" and being thankful I'm not that old when, in fact, they probably are my peers. On some days I'm mystified as I stare at a gray haired lady peering back at me from my mirrow and quietly wonder exactly who she is and why she resembles me so much.

I think age must be irrelevant and the attitude with which we approach life is what really matters. I struggle with some physical issues that leave me unable to do the same things I could do a couple years ago... (damned arthritis) but still in my head the ideas come, the love of literature grows with each book and the seeking after new ideas and ways to view any given topic is a part of me.

One of the things I have learned is that I don't know it all. I have learned to keep silence and listen to other solutions to problems because there is always more than one right answer to any question, and sometimes the best right answer is not my own.

I do think it necessary for todays youth to stand up and be heard. A college student complained to me how sorry he was that there was nothing in his generation against which he could rebel. He wished he had gone to school in the 60s so he could take up a placard and march to a cause. Well, that was before 9/11... but even before 9/11 there were causes to stand behind and reasons one could find to be a rebel if they really looked. Perhaps his problem was one of apathy instead of the lack of a cause to sponsor.

And my faith in God has grown stronger as I have grown older. I find that belief in His existence is rather like creating something... you begin with the basics and as time helps your faith grow so also does your understanding of the one in whom you have placed that faith. If one has never bothered to walk along side God and challenge Him, they have gained nothing substantive on which their faith will grow.

I hope to continue to age. I want to be a grandmother. I want to always be challenged. I want to know new things and new ideas. I just don't want to have to leave home as often. I shall definitely leave the revolutions for the young rebels to fight. So young folks...Fight on!

[Dave The Dov]

When my grandfather was nearing death he still kept a twinkle in his eye and it made me feel good to see that he wasn't that aspect of the coming to the end of his life was going to get him down. He passed away at the age of 80.
_________________
ressesion