Ageism

Ageism, unlike racism and sexism, is ignored and rarely understood as prejudice. It is a real blind spot. Ageism is widespread, socially permitted, and rarely named as prejudice.
 
There is no outcry for reparations, equality, inclusion, an Elderly Pride Day, affirmative action, preference in hiring, quotas, more face time in media and ads, lax policing, and reduced or no sentencing for crimes.
 
Making fun of the elderly is given a total pass and considered harmless. Comedians do it, and we all laugh. The public at large does it as a matter of course without guilt or reflection.
 
But there's a cruel, but just, ironic revenge. We all become old and victims of the disrespect we dished out.
 
When we age, we keep moving from one age group to another--accepted into a new one, ostracized from the previous one. We start to notice this at about 40, when we start being addressed as sir or ma'am.
 
Race and sex are what we are born with and cannot change. It's fixed in the DNA. Ageing, however, changes our shell gradually and relentlessly. We remain the same person on the inside, but our body becomes something different. 

​Ageing doesn't change people into different creatures. That elderly person bent and shuffling along, in their own mind, is still the same person they were when they were riding a tricycle. The sense of self, pride, and desire for respect remain within until death.
 
Old people are just children trapped in failing body machines with decades of memory and experience layered on top. If they seem removed and distant, it's because they are physically handicapped, bored with the folly of many of life's activities, or have acquiesced to being excluded and ignored.
 
Age makes one wiser, not different inside, or insensitive to how others treat us. The tragedy for the elderly is that they not only endure a failing body, its limitations, and pain, but society ignores, ridicules, and discards them precisely when they need patience and respect the most.
 
There is little that we can do as we age to prevent the prejudice against us--the same prejudice we had when we were young.
 
We can, however, do our best to stay young and healthy as old as possible and resist internalizing the disregard aimed at us.
 
However, to our own detriment, we carry age bias right along with us as the years pass. If a person figures that by age 40 they should not be trying to beat their record in the 100-yard dash, that it is futile to try to create a better physique by age 50, by age 60 they should be retiring, or that by age 70 sex life should be over, then so it will likely be. Expectation becomes self-fulfilling.
 
This is not to say that the limitations of age should not be accommodated. Biology should force that, not belief.

​There is little that can't be done at any age. We can always begin a new career, gain new knowledge, become a community leader, make a better world, and find new friends or deepen old ones.
 
Even as our body does inevitably decline, we can, with will, stave off or minimize that decline far longer than most people assume. We will not be able to do as much or as fast, without injury. But we can do what we can with measure and intelligence. We can even achieve new physical and mental feats late in life.

Staying young as old as possible requires constantly sending signals to the mind and body that they need to be alive and useful. That is done with continuing mental and physical challenges, and keeping self-care (not medical) a constant goal rather than outsourcing vitality to doctors and pills.
 
In other words, never give up. Don't surrender to your or others' biases about age. Doing so makes them true.
 
And for the young, the way you speak about or treat the elderly today is how you are rehearsing your own future. Every joke, dismissal, and act of impatience is a dry run for your future. 

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