We Don't Need No Stinking Standards! How to Kick That Can of Crap Down the Alley

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Daniel Páscoa on Unsplash

Lest you toss me out the window, let me explain

JC leaned across the table, his lively eyes dancing. We were in the middle of one of those deep dialogues about life wherein his Millennial observations were going to skewer some long-held and often-idiotic belief of mine.

Sunday was no exception. I was in for a doozy.

It’s time to lower your standards.

Wait. What? Right when we need them the most?

Let me back up for context.

Besides being my closest friend, JC’s a client. I write articles for his company, Hawthorn Senior Living, so we regularly discuss my assignments. As a result, we massage ideas, and I get to regularly challenge the inevitable and often sneaky ageist bullshit that comes up inside me, courtesy our society.

In this case we were discussing how our personal values and standards get entangled. How all too often, standards end up being a cat o’ nine tails with which we berate ourselves as we age, because we can’t let go of some previous heroic version of ourselves that simply no longer exists.

Can’t exist.

When we do this, often we aren’t living our values, especially if said values include things like Fairness, Kindness and Integrity, as mine do.

Here’s what I mean. In this example, for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use the body as the vehicle for this discussion. Since we humans are so strongly identified with our physical selves, when that physical self begins to inexorably change, it’s fair to say that we tend to have issues, especially in the West.

The loss of body agency is seen as insulting, a betrayal, even a disease by many who cannot comprehend the absolute law of age. Or in all fairness, by people who have a profit to make with our disgust about aging. Here is one place where our standards can clash hard with our value set.

I recently wrote a piece about exploring our values. My friend Melissa had given me a set of value cards. I’d done the provided exercise multiple times until I had a pyramid of fifteen from the original fifty-plus. At the very top was Fairness. The second line included both Integrity and Kindness.

Those values have been developed, massaged and tested over my 72 years. They ring true.

Okay, well, most of the time, except when I forget about those three top values when it comes to how I treat myself, especially as I age.

Here’s what I mean.

I was just on the Rogue River for the third time with Oregon River Experiences. This time I noticed a few things that were disconcerting: that my newly-repaired and still very painful feet simply didn’t work very well on rocky ground, at least while wearing soft river shoes.

Second, that because my feet are unsteady, I couldn’t count on them so that I could do some basic chores, like help lift heavy items off the boat onto the shore for campsite set up.

My hands, having been relieved of some bones and some ligaments, also aren’t as dependable. Dropping one end of a heavy box full of food is an unwelcome reminder that my body ain’t what it used to be, even five years ago.

While I didn’t drop the box, I was aware of how hard it was to hang on.

Some of that I can regain. Some of it I can’t. Ever. The bones and ligaments are gone forever. The screws in my hip are there forever. The twenty-two concussions, well.

We are born with a stupendous set of intricately-designed working parts. When we mess with that setup, we’re invited to adapt.

Or we can sink into righteous anger at our poor bodies for not being twenty or thirty any more, with all the working parts in perfect order. Well, okay, if they ever were to begin with, which in my case is questionable.

I could go on, but you get it. My tender, ridiculous ego was a bit offended that I couldn’t lift heavy shit, show off my bulging biceps, be Super Girl or Wonder Woman.

I should be able to do all that hard labor as well as or better than all those twenty-something guides.

That is a standard.

It’s also utterly ridiculous.

JC, in his job as marketing director for Hawthorn, interviews many, many residents. They are, on average, about 75 or so. By this point, those residents have come home to Jesus if you will about their limitations.

Most, at least. Their golf games, pickleball, whatever it is that they do are all affected by the lives they’ve led up to this point.

Those who are happier are markedly so because they’ve been able to negotiate their standards to reflect the body they have as opposed to the body they used to have.

Standards are often ego-based bars that we set for ourselves. It’s a level or quality or attainment by which we gauge our intrinsic value.

Standards are steeped in “shoulds,” as in “I should be able to everything I could do before.”

I should be able to balance on this ladder, dig this hole, lift this weight.

Should should should should.

Fuck our shoulds, frankly.

That’s how we get hurt physically, like trying to do things our aging bodies either can’t do right now or will never do again.

As all of us have found, some things we can get back. Some are gone forever (okay, smooth thighs for one).

That’s how we demean ourselves emotionally, by expecting our bodies to perform perfectly our entire lives.

That’s also how we end up tinkering with our faces to the point where we’re ridiculous.

I’ve lived especially hard these last years since 2011 with my extreme adventure sports. For all of us, injuries, disease, birthing kids change us.

This does not in any way change my commitment to working out, to staying in shape. To eating well and continuing the pushups and all the rest. Not at all. That’s a value.

The standard is to what level I can push myself, the unfair expectations that I place on a body which, in some cases, simply cannot do the same things.

That’s not a failing, it’s a fact of life.

To wit: when you have thumb surgery, your grip changes forever. Lose a ligament, and you’d be wise to buy your coffee cups at Goodwill. You can choose to be angry and resentful or you can have a sense of humor about it.

This of course is true at any age, but most especially so as age begins to wind us down no matter how hard we work to slow the process. Exercise does slow the process, considerably. But we still deteriorate and die.

The difference is in respecting, with great grace and appreciation, that after a lifetime of hard damned use, it’s time to fold up the cape and donate it to Goodwill. When we can set aside what are often terribly unfair standards (especially of youthful beauty for us women) a whole other kind of life is available.

There is, inevitably, grief involved. The more identified we are with the body, the harder it is to watch our body age. My hand is up here. I grew up a family full of body- and age-conscious people. It’s just one reason I write about it; it’s deeply personal.

Our “hundred percent healthy” is going to change as we age. I’m not going to be lifting and moving heavy dressers alone anymore. Not because I’m not strong, but because my hands and feet can’t do it.

Photo by Ranurte on Unsplash

To that, for the fun of it, I found one of those standards on line. You can do it, too, and you might enjoy seeing how you do.

This is the sit-to-stand test to establish a baseline for how you’re aging.

In short, you sit on a chair, arms crossed, and see how many times you can stand up from a seated position in thirty seconds.

From the article:

Find out how you compare

According to the CDC, the average STS test scores for each age group are:

• 60-64 the average score is 14 for men, and 12 for women

• 65–69 the average score is 12 for men, and 11 for women.

• 70-74 the average score is 12 for men, and 10 for women.

• 75–79 the average score is 11 for men, and 10 for women.

• 80–84 the average score is 10 for men, and 9 for women.

• 85–89 the average score is 8 for both, men and women.

• 90–94 the average score is 7 for men, and 4 for women.

Yesterday for giggles, I did the test. I scored 26, when my age group’s average is ten.

The ego loves loves loves (I sound like Mr. Darcy) such tests so that I can flex against an average. While that may be silly, the truth is that such standards are indeed useful for us to gauge how well we age.

From an emotional point, however, we don’t need no stinking unfair standards.

While I may strongly object to the changes I see, I can also be achingly grateful for the 72 years of service my body has given me to date. The fact that I am still in superb shape. That most of my parts still work, that I still can raft the river, that I can still ride horses and climb mountains and lift weights.

That I am still, astoundingly, still alive, and not only that, damned healthy.

Erika Andersen

just sent me this comment which was beautifully well-timed:

An incredibly wise man once said to me: “every moment, remember death and life.” Meaning, be aware that death is a possibility in every instant, and that right now you have this astonishing gift of being alive. (author bolded)

When our standards threaten to undermine our love of life, when terribly unkind ego-based shoulds effectively should all over our joy, it’s time to rethink the standards and ask if we’re applying our value set to ourselves.

In my pyramid of values, Courage sits right next to Health. I hope to have the Courage to feel gratitude for as long as I get to breathe.

My body isn’t letting me down as I age. It’s letting me live.

It’s also my job not to berate this amazing vehicle for doing what it eventually must do: go back to stardust. That stardust becomes part of the environment, which eventually finds its way into becoming someone else.

Where’s the how-to in all this? Every time you get mad at yourself for not being able to (fill in the blank), question where the anger arises. If you wouldn’t get angry at a beloved friend or family member for not being able to open a can of peanut butter, do you not deserve the same grace?

Then ask: is this an unfair “should,” or is this a symptom (like grip strength) of something I need to work on? One is a stinking standard that we get to challenge. The other is a health question which, if we value body agency, we get to address with respect and kindness rather than judgment.

Aging is hard damned work, full of surprises, delights, grief and gratitude. As I navigate my own aging body I get to choose whether I celebrate what I can still do, or be angry for what I can’t. One path leads to bitter, one to better.

Heartfelt thanks to my readers and subscribers for your comments, your input and your support. I am constantly learning from other writers, from what you share and your perspectives, and I am deeply honored to share wisdom from all of you.

Above all I hope you greet the day with love and greet your mirror with kindness.

Let’s play.

A gift from my garden to you all:

A surprise from a corner of my yard

With thanks to fellow Stacker

Valerie Monroe

for the tagged article on Kris Jenner. She writes How to Not F*ck Up Your Face.