The Effects of AgingPosted by admin on July 18th, 2009
From what I can tell, the worst effect of aging is not the crow’s feet, slow metabolism, or lack of technological prowess. It’s the overwhelming need to project one’s fears upon younger souls.
Since aging is relative, this effect hits every age group. Even though I am very young in the grand scheme of life, I find myself speaking to my pre-teen or teenaged tutoring clients and relatives as though I have the answers to all their predicaments. I tell them not to get so worried, not to rest their hopes on the generosity of a teacher or the devotion of a new love, and sometimes share stories from my middle or high school years. After the fact, though, I always wonder how my mouth shifted into overdrive and why I couldn’t just listen and offer support instead of advice.
When I’m on the other side of the table, at the receiving end of words of “wisdom,” all I usually want to hear is silence and the occasional nod. Perhaps it’s not the healthiest thing: just needing a pat on the back, but it’s a powerful desire nonetheless. I am well aware of my own inability to absorb constructive criticism as just that, and have to fight the urge to hop on my defensive soapbox. Still, there’s an interesting contrast that seems to smack twentysomethings in the face, regardless of which respective demons are perched on our shoulders.
We are asked to stand on our own two feet from birth (or maybe a few months thereafter), and get to enjoy wild celebrations and preposterous rituals each time we surpass a symbolic step toward complete independence. We receive our first caps and gowns when we graduate from preschool, and come to expect the pomp and circumstance through years of academic and athletic achievement. Then it’s on to the driver’s permit, the driver’s license, college acceptance letters — one tangible sign of approval after another. Continue the excitement through college, and perhaps grad school, and it’s no wonder that we will look around for a dangling candy bar well into adulthood.
But that’s precisely when it all disappears. For most, the post-college years are a period of great struggle with identity, money, and relationships. We don’t know what we want, because no one is telling us what we want anymore. Suddenly, every decision seems bursting with the potential for the big F-word: FAILURE. That’s a particularly tough reality for someone like me, who never encountered an F in the past.
Given all the cultural and technological changes that stand between the generations, it’s difficult to discern the extent to which our sensitivity is about personality. When anyone 10, 20, 30, even 50 years older than me offers a new viewpoint, it arouses my inner teenager and makes me want to hold up a shield. I can tell myself it is that darn perfectionist that lives somewhere inside me, but I also wonder if it’s just a symptom of being 22.
Does every stage of life present the same challenge to each of its inhabitants? Is there a right and wrong way to deal with those challenges?
My instinct is to say that if there were a right way, life would be rather pointless. Upon reaching its end, what would we say we had learned?
