Life continues to surprise me….I’m very glad to say. For instance, I turned round the other day and realised I was old. I can’t speak for others in my age group any more than I can speak on behalf of men just because I am one, after all, one is a pretty small sample size and I only know how one now-old male feels and thinks. I don’t feel old but the physical signs of system breakdown are pretty evident and it’s clear to me that I am perceived by many (most?) of humanity as old. So I thought I’d try and capture my experience of this odd business of becoming old and then realising it has happened.
The hardest part of all this is physical deterioration. Like an assassin in the night, or an overdraft at the end of the month come to that, it comes stealthily and then suddenly you’re fighting off a murderous attack or a letter from the computer pretending to be a bank manager. First your skin goes; I don’t mean lines and wrinkles – that’s just the start. Things sag, skin gets blotchy, skin gets dry, skin gets saggy. Essentially skin stops being skin and starts being discoloured parchment. This happens gradually of course as does hair loss but they’re both one way processes.
What else could go wrong? Well aches and pains, stiffness, joint wear that brings unbearable pain, muscle wastage, indigestion, flatulence, incontinence, deafness, deteriorating eyesight and hearing, tremors, a stoop, libido as a distant memory and loads of other goodies without referencing the life-threatening diseases. Any one of these would be a tad annoying but all of them!
Just as the outside deteriorates, the inside does too. It’s a good job we can only see the exterior I think – that’s bad enough. And all this means medication! Suddenly the heaviest item when packing to go away is the medicine bag. On the upside the old have a lot more pharmaceutical knowledge than the careless young; you name it, we’ve had it. Ailments, medicine and the grading of GPs replace sex as the burning topics of discussion among friends, AKA silly old sods like me.
Alongside knowing and finally admitting I’ll never play for Liverpool, comes a touch, if you’re lucky just a touch, of mental deterioration. Vocabulary decreases, sentences present the kind of challenge the young only face when they really have drunk far too much wine (if it is wine the young drink these days). Ideas still form but not always in sequential order – and memory…well I can’t really recall what the word means. It’s pretty sobering to recognise that those old farts blocking my passage by standing around in supermarket aisles and motorway service entrances while wondering where to go or who they are, are……… just like me but mostly with better dress sense.
We worry more too, of course because we’ve got time to do it. The things we did on the fly in the past, have to be meticulously planned, not least because of loo breaks. There’s a business opportunity there for someone – a Baedeker’s of open public toilets would sell, especially in large print or as a (very loud) audiobook
Is there an upside? Of course; work, for some of us at least, even if a declining number, is optional. There is more time for friends too and, if we don’t become increasingly conservative with age there’s every chance we’ll become more radical. There are apparently around 160,000 Conservative Party members, which is amazing but puts them in a very significant minority; there are probably more Labour Party members in Liverpool than that, though they may not be happy with Sir K’s middle of the road policies. Being able to take a long view because we’ve been around a while makes it pretty easy to see just how messed up the world is; we know it wasn’t always like this and we’ve got a pretty good idea who to blame. Realising we’ve been alive a fair bit longer than we’re going to be alive certainly focusses the mind.
So, here’s some advice for anyone under 50 and especially for anyone under 25: don’t wait, live now, get out and get involved: march, protest, volunteer. Don’t just live in the world (though that’s better than the metaverse or Love Island) don’t just live in it, change it. You may not even notice the elderly and the old, or treat them with kindly condescension but, if you’re lucky enough to survive, you too will be old – not in the far distant future, but in the blink of an eye; you really don’t want to look back and wonder if you could have been more and done more.
As always someone said it better and shorter:
All the world’s a stage,
Old what’s his name, it’s on the tip of my thingy, you know…he wrote plays and stuff
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
