You're Too Old to Believe Clickbait Headlines: "You Are Not Gross and Sad for Getting Older"
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Journalists and editors should be ashamed of themselves
The headline nearly slapped me up’ side of da haid, as we say in the South where I grew up.
Here’s what got my goat.
The Los Angeles Times headline:
“You’re not gross and sad for getting older. Here’s how to think about aging instead”
Well, how about we start with not printing such hyperbolic ageist bullshit in the first place?
The article wasn’t bad, but the title, well.
Gross and sad. I have several choice responses to that. Here’s what I do at this GROSS and SAD point of my life:
Yeppirs. I am just Gross and Sad.
Bet you aren’t any more Gross and Sad than I am, either. Bet you have your own terrific stories, cool activities, wonderful besties and all kinds of adventures you’re out there living.
So kindly, where does all this Gross and Sad as we age come from?
Media, which is fueled by ad sales (including all those folks who profit from age-terror) pushes the line that age is bad, awful, something to be feared, hated and above all AVOIDED at all costs, as if we could.
Just. Go. Spit.
And I suspect I may speak for many of us, please get out of the damned way so that we can get on with living our out-there interesting lives while other folks worry about getting Gross and Sad at our age.
To be fair, there are plenty of folks who are invested in being angry at what time has taken. Those are not my readers, nor would any of them be in my circle of friends.
Part of the magic of rising into the best of our last years means surrounding ourselves with folks who understand the true gifts and richness available, and who face fearlessly towards an end we know is coming.
But those of us who live in America, this kind of pap about aging is what we face everyday. Even otherwise good outlets like The New Yorker, long considered some of the country’s best writing, has stooped to age mocking covers to make a point.
While there is a legitimate argument that SOME very old people who happen to be politicians should step aside, one of the essential tenets of understanding the -isms is that we don’t include ALL old people the same way we don’t make sweeping, superficial and genuinely foolish statements about ALL Black people, ALL men, All women, ALL autistic people, etcetera.
In such ways we broadcast our ignorance, prejudices, fears and utter lack of understanding and compassion to the world.
It’s also unfair to us, for when we espouse ageism, we are hating our future selves.
It’s patently unfair to millions of people to make such all-encompassing judgements. Yet when it comes to those of us past sixty, all bets are off, and all the knives are out.
Why? First, because all of us age, and what a massive market to mine for those with products to sell.
And second, because such clickbait sells, for we are so bullied by an ageist society, we fear our own demise.
It’s hard enough to negotiate the Class V rapids of an aging body.
It’s far worse to have to deal with society, media and eager people with said products and services, all telling us lies about the incredible journey that aging truly is.
You and I are Way Too Old to be whipsawed and browbeaten by sensationalism meant to scare the pants off all of us fifty and beyond.
Such articles are too often written by much younger people who may well already have a pretty serious prejudice about aging, They can be at times all too swift to decide that life after fifty is nothing but oxygen tanks, walkers and decrepitude.
In case you missed it, AARP some time back did this video which spoke to just how powerful ageist indoctrination is:
That video is just one reason why inter-generational households teach all of us how ridiculous our assumptions are. Worse, why shuttling off our elders into no-man’s land robs us of our own futures.
But wait, there’s more.
Any child development professional will go ape telling you about how swiftly an infant moves through its developmental phases to early adulthood.
You don’t get many people discussing the extremely rapid developments- and let’s can the word decline for once- that the aging person experiences. Far more, far faster.
The changes we undergo are amazing. The brain in particular, starting around mid-life, shifts from rapid fire to a more considered, thoughtful pace. That’s not declining per se.
That’s simply developing into the next incredible set of possibilities, demands and opportunities, which require a very different kind of thinking, emotional range and evolution.
That’s the necessary development of fifty years of acquiring untold quadrillions of bits of information and impressions. We catalog, store, organize all that information for future reference and application.
No wonder we start to forget things!
These changes some would see as losses. However other parts of the brain are just as swiftly making up for what’s being left at the door of middle age.
As long as you and I are willing to do the work, to commit to the common sense steps, our bodies are designed to accommodate shifts in some areas by changes, growth, adaptations in others.
I disagree that this is decline. These are gifts, advantages and opportunities.
We can create decline when we abuse our bodies and brains with crap food, bad habits, laziness, anxiety and all the other stresses of modern life. Or not.
Because as we finally, finally start letting go of the compulsion to have, we begin to realize the importance of learning to be. To appreciate, to be present more, love more, give more and participate at a higher level.
All those are also developments. That’s not declining by any measure. They are, in fact, net gains.
As we relinquish the stranglehold of having to the release of being, huge stresses drop away. When we give up the need to be all that and a bag of chips, including trying to be what we will never be again, like young, the world opens up in a million new ways.
If you and I only see aging as a physical experience and discount or disregard the exquisite emotional, intellectual and spiritual journeys which open up to us, of course we frame it exclusively as decline.
Our final third is full of remarkable developments. Learning to see aging in those terms instead of declining abilities is a superpower.
That’s precisely why I am so irritated with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s very public verbal abuse of his nearly eighty-year-old body. He is what happens when we are so identified with our physical selves and what beauty we may have had, that we cripple ourselves as we age.
In this regard, Arnold is an emotional child, utterly unable to grow into what he could be if he would relinquish the vision he had of himself as Mr. Olympia.
Worse, he is teaching all his admirers to do the same: hate their aging bodies.
That’s why aging vibrantly, courageously and elegantly ain’t for sissies. It takes real work. It all begins between our ears, including shutting our ears to such toxicity.
Growing older well is for grown-ups. True grownups don’t get sucked in by clickbait crap, especially when written by people a third our age whose editors are beholden to people selling junk to people terrified of aging.
All due respect to young journalists, and I was once one myself, let’s have folks our age write about ageing because they are living it.
Dedicated to all mid-life and older writers everywhere who speak their truth about what’s to love the longer we live. Thank you.
Let’s play.
Thank you again for hanging with me today. If this article gave you a lift, some inspiration and a spark, please consider
If you know someone who is obsessing about aging and might want a boost, please also consider
Either way I hope you don’t waste a New York Minute worrying about aging, for you will age yourself twice as fast during that minute. Be joyful. Be grateful. It pays.
I can't express the depth of my gratitude to the LA Times for the revelation that I'm not gross and sad! Who knew? And there's ANOTHER way to think about aging?? What would I have done without that puppy chow reporter to illumine my foggy old noggin?
Yes. My mother grew up in a multi-generational household. I remember my great aunts sewing, reading, playing cards, and games with us like Statues and card games. Being around them socialized me, taught me to be a story teller, helped me grow into my young adulthood watching their example. And people in their 60s, 70s and 80s were treated respectfully, allowed to speak while others listened. Quite the MF to realize I'm going to have to fight for what was naturally given a short while ago. Great picture, by the way!