Like many of my (male) con­tem­po­raries, I have no objec­tion to — and truth be told am hap­py to rev­el in — being called “a cer­ti­fied old fart”. I do, how­ev­er take seri­ous umbrage at the sug­ges­tion that age is by def­i­n­i­tion a deficiency.
The inani­ty of “ageism” was neat­ly summed up in edi­to­r­i­al car­toon of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, clad in a cape and a tee shirt labelled “Super Joe”, doing a bal­anc­ing act on a wire marked 50/50 Sen­ate, while car­ry­ing all his recent suc­cess­es. A young-look­ing spec­ta­tor — androg­y­nous, spiky hair, pierc­ings and bored open-mouth yawn — dis­miss­es the impres­sive act as “he’s still too old”.
A pletho­ra of pun­dits and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors, many of whom fit the delight­ful­ly quaint cat­e­go­ry of “no spring chick­en”, pass the same lazy judge­ment with great regularity.
They wil­ful­ly – or per­haps for­get­ful­ly? – ignore Covid eco­nom­ic aid, min­i­mum cor­po­rate tax and pre­scrip­tion drug price lim­its, all accom­plished in the face of pig-head­ed Repub­li­can self-interest.
Indis­putably, age does exact a toll on sta­mi­na and in too many cas­es, cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty. As many of us who have to deal with loved ones “los­ing it” know to our pain and sor­row, “aging grace­ful­ly” is not a uni­ver­sal­ly grant­ed gift.
Thank­ful­ly, mod­ern med­i­cine is mak­ing progress in under­stand­ing demen­tia and oth­er age-relat­ed fail­ings, and how to slow their progress and cope with the vicis­si­tudes, which is of some com­fort to those of us who see them loom­ing poten­tial­ly larg­er on our life span horizon.
Maybe soon more of us will be able to echo the glee­ful self-descrip­tion of a lady I know who just turned 100: “I may not move so well, but I’ve still got all my mar­bles”.
While many mod­ern soci­eties tend to shunt the elder­ly aside, Indige­nous cul­tures tra­di­tion­al­ly respect them and seek their counsel.
In Cana­di­an First Nations cul­ture, they are the “Gate­keep­ers” of wis­dom and his­to­ry. “They impart tra­di­tion, knowl­edge, cul­ture, val­ues, and lessons using oral­i­ty and role mod­el­ing tra­di­tion­al prac­tices.”                         

                             AGE IS A NUMBER, BUT…

It’s not unrea­son­able to muse on whether as an octo­ge­nar­i­an, Biden may not be up to the stress­es and strains of what is wide­ly held to be one of the most dif­fi­cult and pre­ma­ture­ly aging jobs in the world.
On the oth­er hand, con­sid­er this:
Nel­son Man­dela became South Africa’s first black pres­i­dent at 77, after spend­ing 27 years in prison. Hav­ing seen his cell and the stone quar­ry where he toiled on Robben Island, I would con­tend that was as hard, if not hard­er on a man’s men­tal and phys­i­cal well-being than rul­ing in the White House. And, non-Boomers take note:  he nev­er, ever whined about his lot in life, or laid blame on pre­vi­ous generations.
Ben­jamin Franklin helped draft the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and nego­ti­at­ed the 1783 Treaty of Paris end­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War at the age of 70.  The aver­age age of death of the “Found­ing Fathers “was 65.
To put that in the per­spec­tive of “youth cul­ture”, what’s the bet Kei­th Richards (78) and Mick Jag­ger (79) will still be rock­ing after 80, as Bob Dylan and Willie Nel­son are?
In the meantime:
Minoru Saito from Japan became the old­est per­son to sail solo and non-stop around the world in 2011, when he was 77.
John Glenn was the same age when he set the record as the old­est astronaut.
The old­est man to scale Mount Ever­est did so after he turned 80. It was Yuichi­ro Mira’s third time on the top of the world.
The list goes on and on.

                                     SO WHAT?

Every­one occa­sion­al­ly for­gets where they left their car keys. It’s when they’re in your hand and can’t remem­ber what they’re for that it’s time to worry.
We tell our kids they need to get out and learn about the world. We tol­er­ate their fol­lies because they’re not mature, then den­i­grate a politi­cian who is both that and expe­ri­enced. Spare me.
One of the dumb­est ques­tions I’ve ever been asked came in a job inter­view when I was about to grad­u­ate from uni­ver­si­ty: “What expe­ri­ence would you bring to us?”
I was 22. What did they expect?
“None that relates to the job on offer,” I said. “But I’m about to get a piece of paper that proves I know how to learn.”
Maybe because he’d nev­er had the inani­ty of the ques­tion brought to his atten­tion before, the recruiter offered me the job. It was in sales. Luck­i­ly for both of us, I turned it down, which I guess proves that you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be old to have a mea­sure of wisdom.
That said, the last word on the sub­ject, in a man­ner of speak­ing, should sure­ly go to the revered Welsh poet Dylan Thomas:
“Do not go gen­tle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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