By Edward Adler
I’m a hardcore native New Yorker who never considered residing anywhere else. But I’ve been living in Florida this winter and working remotely.
When I told friends and colleagues where I was headed, many warned me that I’d start using a walker and eating dinner at 4:30 for the early-bird specials. The old people jokes were so frequent it was if I was being admitted to a nursing home.
In fact, I’ve become friendly here with many older people, including a number in their 70s and 80s who are more vigorous and active than I am. They are sharp, quick-witted, and up to the minute in their grasp of current news and cultural happenings.
And they express desires and hopes like the rest of us. They don’t dwell in the past, reminiscing that their bygone years were better than their current ones.
Yet, it seems that older people are the one group that can be insulted, defamed and demeaned without consequence. They remain the butt of hundreds of acceptable jokes, like:
Two old men in a retirement village were sitting in the reading room, and one said to the other, “How do you really feel? I mean, you’re 72 years old — how do you feel?”
“Honestly, I feel like a newborn baby,” the other man replies. “I’ve got no hair, no teeth, and I just wet myself.’
No one likely will “cancel” me for repeating that barb, but it is as offensive as the ethnic slurs that have long since been deemed unacceptable.
Surprisingly, it is still open season to attack those over 65, and no one gets canceled or even criticized. But ageism can lead to job dismissals and discrimination toward employees after they reach a certain age threshold. Such treatment often leads to depression and self-hatred.
Friends have told me that when they hit certain ages, they become invisible to their younger colleagues. Women I know have said the same thing happens to them on dating sites. Other cultures, like Japan, China and Italy, which are often cited as revering the elderly, now are having issues with respecting their aging population.
We just endured a presidential campaign where anyone, no matter their political leanings, could make fun of Joe Biden’s age. It was common to hear supporters and detractors alike say he was hiding in the basement and was so cognitively impaired he needed all his words written out.
Despite his victory, America had a laugh making fun of his age. Since he has been president the jokes have receded, and, despite flubbing a word or two, people realize that older people like Biden, Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi and even Mitch McConnell have much to offer from their experience, wisdom and gravitas.
In recent months, teenagers and millennials began using the mocking phrase “OK, Boomer” to dismiss the concerns and attitudes of their elders.
Young people (including my own son and daughter) still think it’s fine to mock their parents because they are older, without thinking of the personal impact. If young children see older people being disrespected, they may grow up thinking that they themselves are useless when they reach their 60s. We don’t expect or encourage healthy aging when everybody who hits 65 thinks it’s often all downhill from there.
Many seniors buy into society’s view that they’ve become irrelevant. They shun exercise, they don’t volunteer and often quit working because they feel they may face discrimination. They don’t seek a new mate if their spouse dies, because they think, “I’m next.” There is both a societal and personal impact to internalized ageism. And many older folks deny their aging by trying to act and look younger, becoming self-parodies.
The Guardian reports that a British charity called the Centre for Ageing Better published a report called “Doddery But Dear?” full of familiar but unintended put-downs. It used words such as “grey tsunami,” “demographic cliff” and “demographic timebomb,” which present old age in terms of a burden on society.
Two years ago, research published by the UK Royal Society for Public Health found that a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 believed it was normal for older people to be unhappy and depressed — and, across all age groups, nearly a third of people agreed with the statement: “Being lonely is just something that happens when people get old.” Strikingly, two-thirds of the respondents said they had no friends with an age gap of 30 years or more.
According to Axios, violence against Americans 60 and over has surged in recent years, and the pandemic has made it worse. Many feel that the lockdowns occurred just to protect older people from infection, and they often resent it.
We must value the old in society. It is a lesson I’m learning as I age. My stay in Florida has only made it clearer.
Aging baby boomers know now that pop genius Neil Young, 75, said it best when he sang as a young man unknowingly against ageism: “Old man, take a look at my life/I’m a lot like you./I need someone to love me the whole night through.”
Edward Adler, a resident of Southampton and New York City, is a partner of Finsbury Glover Hering, a global strategic communications firm.
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