Boomers as seniors maintain relevance
October 9, 2007
How will boomers approach aging? Will boomers accept the traditional ageism of being devalued by society based on age?
Periodically, life will summon us to answer the questions: Who am I? Why am I here? and What is my life about? On my bookshelf sits a thin little book full of extraordinary thought titled The Call, written by author David Spangler, who examines these questions.
When are we asked to answer the call most profoundly?
“The call actually comes from the person standing in front of you, who in their hearts of hearts is saying, “Will you be kind to me?” “Will you value me?” “Will you honor me?” “Will you see the sacred in me, the sovereignty in me?” according to Spangler.
Perception is everything to a belief system, and for generations who have come and gone, to age and grow older is to become bothersome and irrelevant to the heartbeat and movement of society. Where do people shuffle off to after they retire? The rats still in the race have little real idea or interest in answering that question. And why should they? Tradition has been quite successful at marginalizing seniors into burdensome and ineffective members of society.
A survey conducted by University of Alberta researchers to gain insight into how seniors are perceived by both caregivers and an equal number of those who do not provide care for seniors, revealed that those advanced in age are stereotypically seen as “grouchy, inflexible to change, and mostly living in nursing homes.”
According to the study, “While almost 40 percent of those surveyed thought 25 percent of people over 65 were in institutions, only five percent actually are … making the assumption that a lot of older adults aren’t capable of caring for themselves.”
While this study is narrowly-focused on the caregiving perceptions of seniors who might be in need of caregiving services, it highlights a perception of the elderly that is not limited to the view of a small percentage of seniors who reside in long-term care facilities.
For anyone who wonders about the preoccupation of those who will go to any lengths to remain youthful in appearance long past actually being chronologically young, might look no farther than the collective and erroneous concepts about the value of elders. We can begin to appreciate, even while pitying, the obsessive and sad need to appear and act youthful even when being youthful is years behind, because it has been a matter of societal survival.
The motivation is about remaining relevant when the value of being young is the definition of relevance.
Right or wrong, boomers, from the time they were born, have received the message they are not only relevant, but a driving force in breaking down cultural norms to reconstruct new cultural definitions. It is not that this generation is any more wise or insightful than generations past, it is in the critical mass of number that give them the leverage to make paradigm shifts in society. Being or becoming irrelevant is not in the mindset of boomers, and advancing age is not likely to change this fundamental self-to-world-view.
With the assistance of cosmetic surgeons and hair dye companies, will the boomers buy into the idea that to remain relevant one must have the appearance of being young?
I stood in the checkout line of the local grocery, and to pass the time, pulled a magazine off the rack. Thumbing through the fashion publication, I stopped at a full-page ad of a woman staring back at me that looked much more like my contemporaries than say, a younger Kate Moss. The model, while airbrushed like every other model gracing the pages of a magazine is, had long flowing grayish-white hair and delicate laugh lines feathering from the outer corners of her eyes. It wasn’t AARP or other senior-slash-retirement-slash-travel magazine. It was a leading fashion magazine that Moss also appears.
This is how it begins — when growing older means nothing different than the number of candles on a cake, and the stereotypical attitude towards an aging segment of society that has allowed previous generations to be marginalized dissolves into a faded puff of birthday candle smoke.
Boomers are not going to retire and shuffle off, nor will they stand before society and ask “Will you value me?” Those born to the boomer generation were taught from birth they have substantial societal value, and are likely to continue to believe from the core of their being in the relevant value of societal self at any age. If boomers are successful in redefining what it means to age, and raise the status of elderhood to the level of recognition it deserves, future generations will not need to deal with the issues of ageism — as age will no longer determine the relevance of value in society.
