Ageism  
Anon

Ageism is alive and well in the modern mindset.

It exists as much in the minds of the elderly as anywhere else. Human beings are cultural beings. Western values define aging as decline and deficit. When we reach the point when we are no longer young it is common to become self-critical and negative about our performance even over the most trivial matters.

It is not widely known or well understood that thought is very powerful and creative. It is the stuff that our reality is constructed from.
Negative thinking and limiting or pessimistic attitudes are self fulfilling.

Recently, a mature looking woman approached a shop assistant and asked the location of a particular item. When she realised that she had walked right by it without noticing she quite spontaneously made a gesture with her hand toward her head, implying that she was stupid. I strongly suspect that a younger person would have shrugged the incident off and thought "Oh I must have been preoccupied. "For that senior it was further evidence of her declining powers.

Ours is a death denying culture we shrink from even the thought of death in fear and terror and go to enormous lengths to avoid anything which could remind us of it. For us, youth is life and old age is sickness and death. We want to be forever young and never grow old, and of course never die.

Though there is no place in our society for old age and death some cultures accord great honour and high status to their elders. These old ones have an important and respected role as advisors in all areas of human life. They are seen to be experienced in living and therefore wise, and they are honoured for the fact that they are somewhat closer to death and to joining the ranks of the beloved ancestors. This is seen as conferring a certain detachment from the intensity and worries of everyday life which adds greatly to the aura of wisdom and love that these beautiful souls contribute to their people.

It has been said that youth is wasted on the young. I was asked recently by my fifteen year old grandson if I minded getting old, I am not yet sixty but to him I probably seem pretty old. My immediate response was that there are compensations to getting older. It's likely that not everyone would see it that way but there is a lot to be said for life with some level of awareness and understanding or what we know as wisdom.

Wisdom does not come automatically with grey hair it must be sought after. Some people learn from experience and others seem not to really have much different experience to draw from but to repeat the same experiences over and over.

The second half of life is not to be feared or thought of as less than, or inferior to the first half. It is different but beautiful in its own right. An old proverb says it best.