Out With The Old
If there is one thing I'm bad at, it's knowing how my feelings are going to evolve about a subject. And I'm specifying feelings, not the rational thought I may have about it, though they're arguably the same thing. When something big happens, It takes me a long time to metabolize and be able to express my thoughts in a coherent fashion. The death of someone I know usually takes the longest. Be it a childhood friend I've known for most of my life, or a grandparent whom I have literally known for all of my life, it's a shock that is hard to accept.
It is an unavoidable event you won't ever escape in your life. As you get older, it touches you more and more. Marginally, when the older generations begin to fade, until it's people you've known and have been part of your life since you were born. Some come "natural", some are a shock you can't easily recover from. Most of the time, it feels like a bomb has been set off right next to you, and your first reaction is to get away and recover, waiting for your brain to start working again. Do I hear what's happening around me or is it just a loud pitch? Can I see, smell, think again? Then the realization kicks in and you're dealing with the effects of the explosion on. Now it's the physical pain you're dealing with.
My grandfather passed away a few days ago. He was 92, had outlived his parents, siblings, his spouse and most of his life-long friends. He was an extraordinary man who worked hard all of his life, raised 5 children and, after retirement, learned how to use a computer and would spend most of his time online reading, learning, getting in touch with long-lost friends. He was a loving grandfather and was always happy to see his grandchildren. He was physically strong and was never sick nor had any age related issues until his late 80s. Even then, he was still sharp and managed to drive a car basically until the end. His mind was nonetheless failed by his body.
Unfortunately, his last few years weren't happy. My grandmother passed away in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, and within a few months so did his two younger brothers and several people around him. He lived those last few years knowing he was next, but not knowing exactly when. He became spiteful, he started accusing his family not to spend enough time with him, of having become a burden, and nothing they tried would work. He had been a very independent man until then, so all the neediness felt surprisingly out-of-character, but a child twice and a man only once, right?
It really pained me to see someone I had a lot of respect for like that. I would visit every time I would go back home, at least twice. I would spend time talking to him, but he seemed resigned. I wasn't there for his last few days, but they must have been horrible. He lost consciousness or fell asleep, it isn't clear, and hit his face badly. There was apparently a lot of blood. He was brought to a hospital and eventually got back home, but it was clear something was wrong. He needed oxygen and, apparently, not enough was going to his brain. He now needed a wheelchair and his hands and feet weren't working as they should have. My mom told me he was probably not going to last long. And he didn't. But a doctor who visited him after the accident and before he passed away, confirmed he had some trouble communicating because of his injury, but he was still sharp. Some of the things he'd say were "I've lost everything" and "I can't do anything anymore". The fact he didn't live like that for weeks/months/years has been a relief. I don't think I would have been able to keep it together.
I don't know which one it was, if he was afraid to die or simply did not want to, but it affected his final years so negatively it's almost hard to remember the good times, at least for me, having spent more than a decade away from home.
In any case, because of this event, I've been thinking a lot about the role of the old in our society, specifically, two points:
- The loss of valuable experience
- The burden on others
The Loss of Valuable Experience
Things used to move slowly. Your life was not much different from your father and grandfather's life. You were a child for a much shorter time, you could have been a grandfather by the time modern couples decide to start a family. It was very likely everything you needed in life, had already been lived by the people around you. Technology did absolutely play an aspect, it's impossible to think things were absolutely the same between 1850 and 1950, but, undeniably, what my grandfather learned from his father and his grandfather, helped him navigate the world successfully. My parents' generation was probably the last one to be able to gain insight from the people before them, because even with technology moving at neckbreaking speed for most of the 20th century, my grandfather has experienced several lifetimes of progress just in his post-retirement age life.
He was in his 60s in the 90s, when the internet hadn't gone mainstream yet and cellphones were now becoming mainstream. It was neverending. We went from portable disc players to the internet to MP3 players, to a camera in your cellphone to the concept of smartphone to social media to AI. We went from going to a store to buy expensive products who last to the cheap mass-manufactured chinese alternative that works as well and if it doesn't, who cares. You buy ten for the price of one. We went from jobs that last a lifetime and a nicely earned pension to enjoy the rest of your short life, to gig-economy and automation. Life has changed a lot and, unavoidably, left many behind.
The above is not a moral stance of mine; It's not a matter of good or bad, it's an observation. I don't think things are necessarily worse, I just believe, at this pace, we humans go out of date much faster then we used to. What good is how I worked my land for 50 years if now the new technology makes everything more productive with 1/10th of the effort? What good is the kind of relationship we used to have with our neighbors now that the culture has diluted because of both internal (e.g., national media, social networks) and external (high immigration from different cultures). It's hard for me to give dating advice to someone 10 years younger because of all the dynamics, let alone someone who hasn't dated in 70 years. Is there nothing to save, then? I think there is.
Birth and death are more or less the same for everyone, but the in-between can vary a lot. We all go through more or less the same-ish stages. We're children, we're teenagers, young adults, adults, there is what I imagine we could call a "useful old" age to then go in the end of life. It's not clear when they all start and end, it's fuzzy in there. People nowadays stay in the young adult past their 40s, and we've seen the "useful old" age extend, but when they start and end is subjective. We all go through those phases and "feel" differently. And I mean literally, we have different feelings about life and the way we feel about things changes. I believe there is a lot we can learn from the people who have been here longer and have been through those phases. It doesn't matter if you'll spend your life at a post-office, if you've been to war or if your career is showing yourself dancing on the internet, what you feel, what you need, that hasn't changed. We've just added more layers on top of what was there before, that hasn't changed. But we've failed to name and explain those needs, and that has made the elderly redundant.
And as we age, those feelings change. You won't be anxious in your 40s the same way you were anxious in your 20s. You will worry about other things, those feelings will manifest differently. I remember my late uncle saying that to me, and I now understand. Even when I worry about the same thing I used to worry 10+ years ago, it feels different. Yes, it is because of experience. Yes, I did some work on myself, but I believe most of us end up doing something that changes the way we think and, consequently, feel. If not, you have much bigger fish to fry, 17 year old in the body of a 42 year old man.
The Burder on Others
I will say it upfront: I'm out of my depth on this one. I can only guess and think about it, but it's a real issue. People get old and eventually things fall apart. If you're lucky, you'll die before your spouse, siblings and children. If you're not, you'll find yourself alone and with an empty life. My grandfather was more or less lucky, as in he did not find himself completely alone, even though he felt lonely. He was self-sufficient until his last couple of weeks, which means he did not need someone to care for him night and day, but he still made everyone around him feel bad for not spending more time with him. Things could have been worse, but they were still bad.
I wonder what I can do to eventually avoid that. I know it's a bit early to think about it, and if I'm lucky enough, I will leave this planet the way everybody wants to (Sipping a spritz on my yacht, being abducted by aliens), but I think it's best to do what one can to avoid becoming that. Genetics help (and I should have some good ones from that side of my family) but keeping your body healthy and your mind active also helps, hopefully.
The truth is, I don't know what's going to happen in the future and when and how quickly I'll become useless. I don't know if my knowledge and experience will always be valuable, because I can't predict the future (yet). I guess it's best to just accept you'll eventually go out of date and be at peace with it. Just be ok if the world forgets about you and lets you go. Just be ok with being alone. Accept your time has come and gone and just be an available guide if anyone ever needs you, but it's fine if they don't. Just be there, enjoy the ride. Enjoy everything new that comes and embrace the end as just another step in the journey. Don't be spiteful, don't be bitter, try to see the great scheme of things. You didn't matter as a unit, but you did as part of the whole. Whatever you did, moved things forwards, made history. Even if your name won't be remembered, you still took part in it. You might have not accomplished your life goals, but those were arbitrarily set by yourself. Just by living, you played your role. It's up to history to judge it, and for that reason, there is no need to worry about it. We're all Sisyphus pushing the boulder and, looking back, we must imagine ourselves happy.