Something I liked about LDS wards was the wide range of ages and how you get to interact with other generations through working together in callings, or visiting teaching assignments, or just sitting next to people in Sunday School. From the time I was in my 20s, I made plans to be one of those cool old people rather than one of those bitter and boring old people. According to my 25-year-old self, I am now old (though I now believe 50s are just late middle-age).
Here are a couple of “cool old person” rules that I try to follow.
Don’t put young people on the defensive because I read something about young people. When I was a brand-new mom, another brand-new mom and I were assigned to visit teach a woman in her 80s who had raised 14 children and had some wonderful wisdom and life stories. The problem was that to get to the interesting stuff, we first had to sit through a list of things she’d read that young mothers were doing nowadays and assure her that we weren’t actually doing those things. No, we weren’t spending $400 to bring a pony to our child’s first birthday party. No, we weren’t putting our toddlers in high-top shoes that would weaken their ankles. No, we weren’t keeping the house so clean that our babies would develop allergies (picture me reassuring this elderly woman that my son has the chance to eat dirt). I don’t know where she got all these parenting fears, she wasn’t really on the Internet, but she sure had a low opinion of young mothers and it was kind of exhausting to listen to her.
Don’t assume my childhood was better than today’s childhood. My father would frequently sigh and lament that we were being raised in a suburb instead of on a farm, like he was, because growing up on a farm is the One True Childhood. Jeez, dad, the reason we’re not being raised on a farm is because you chose to sell your mom’s farm and raise us in the suburbs. It made me feel inadequate, and like I was missing out. I understand him better now, comparing my bike-riding group of friends to my children’s discord-chatting group of friends playing video games. But even though I wish video games weren’t such a large part of my children’s lives, I don’t sigh and tell them that their childhood is substandard. They’re fitting in with the rest of their generation. A few decades from now, they’ll think their discord-chats made for a better childhood than whatever circumstance children will be raised in a few decades from now.
Listen More Than I Talk. When I’m having a conversation with someone more than a decade younger than I am, I make sure I’m not dominating the conversation with “back in my day.” And when I do start a sentence with “back in my day,” it’s to share a funny story or find a connection. Connect with young people rather than offering unsolicited advice.
Allow the World to Change. The world is changing. It changed between my parents’ generation and my generation. It’s changed between my generation and my children’s generation. This is fine. Children today will grow up with the experiences necessary to cope with the changing world, and then they’ll have children who will also learn to cope with their changing world. The fastest way to alienate young people is to insist that nothing will ever be as good as it used to be.
Questions:
- What did you think of middle-aged and older people when you were young? Did you notice differences between adults you liked to be around and adults you wanted to avoid?
- Did you promise yourself how you would and wouldn’t behave when you were older?
- What “older person” rules do you follow?
- Do you regularly talk to people at least 20 years younger than you are?
Wheat & Tares 
Love this post. My greatest fear in the world is becoming a bitter cranky old person. (Maybe it’s because of the verbal abuse we all suffered at the hands of my grandma).
Since I was a teenager I’ve said that I only want to live to be 67 years old, and then pass on to the other side. (I’ll just live 95 years worth of live in 67 years, and I think I’m on pace).
Maybe it’s just the people I’ve known, but I’ve never met someone over 67 years old and thought “Yeah! I want that!” (No offense intended to all the older readers, I’m sure you’re great).
Until I hit 67, I too have a goal of being a cool old person, and I like your rules.
I think the first rule of any relationship with any person of any age is to really listen, and be curious and ask questions, humbly realizing their situation is likely very different than yours was. Advice is always tempting but rarely appropriate, and then only with explicit permission (as in, I have an idea crossing my mind about that, that may not work in your particular situation, do you want to hear about it?). Unsolicited advice damages relationships. People usually want to be listened to rather than fixed.
People have to work out for themselves what they want to do. They aren’t going to actually accept your idea if there’s any sense someone is pushing something on them. We actually have to kind of discover our own solutions ourselves. For many people talking about it is just a way to think out loud rather than to actually get help.
I think it’s particularly bad form to say critical things about another person’s age group. We are each unique people and young people don’t owe older people anything and vice versa. A good friend asks how you are doing and listens to the answer without comparing or saying a lot. It’s something I am working on.
I am now officially a Septuagenarian, and confess I had to ask Siri how to spell it. When I was “all grown up” in my 20’s and 30’s, I tended to see middle-aged and older people as partially invisible, and dismissed them as always being that age. Within those age groups, however, I would identify with those who had young souls and were fun to be around as I am a young soul myself.
One thing I promised myself I would never do is a soliloquy about my health problems when asked, “How are you?”. There was a woman in my ward who was in her 70’s, and when you greeted her with a “Hi, how are you?”, she would take the next ten minutes or so telling you in detail her latest ailments. All I meant to do was the polite, civil greeting of a warmer “hello”. Have I stuck to that resolution? I’ve tried really hard to be aware of what I’ve replied with, and generally get the “I’m well” response out, but I have slipped a few times. That’s on me and I’ve been embarrassed when that has happened. My friends who want to know about my health can take it to that level if they are truly interested. I never did promise myself that I would act my age, though (see the last sentence in the first paragraph) so I’ve never formally developed “older person” rules.
Yes, I regularly talk to people at least 20 years younger than myself. As I just typed that sentence, I did the math and realized that means 50 year-olds. What I really want to say is I can have good conversations with people in their twenties and/or younger and older. Those same people don’t seem to avoid me, so I guess they can relate to me and I to them.
I may be 70, but I pull out the 25 year-old me that’s inside quite often, and avoid looking in a mirror.
Okay, so I’m 72 years old and hardly a week goes by that I don’t have some sort of medical appointment. This week was my semi-annual eye doctor visit and blood work for the liver transplant center (every 4 months). But other times it’s doctors who care about my skin, guts, arthritis, heart…well, you get the idea. And nobody, certainly those much younger, gives a damn or wants to hear about any of it
I love this post, Janey! I think you’re totally spot on about ways that older people can drive younger people away. I’m in your generation, and I totally try to be a cool older person too, so I appreciate you explicitly outlining these pitfalls. You asked about particular experiences, and I don’t recall any of my own offhand, but I do know my wife has been cornered at church by older women who wanted to lecture her on how to not be too indulgent with our kids. My wife just rolled her eyes. I’m trying to not turn into this kind of lecturer.
I also think lws329 makes a great point that some of your rules can be generalized to all relationships, regardless of age difference (or not).
Great post, Janey. I’m in my mid-50s and in relatively good shape, but my great fear is getting old and losing my freedom. Like aporetic1, I’m terrified of becoming bitter and cranky. That’s partly because I feel like I’m already on the way there. I have a friend who’s a medical director at a retirement home and he says he generally only sees two kinds of old people: 1) those who are kind, benevolent, patient and loving; the ones who really learned from life about how to treat people and be friendly and 2) people who are exactly the opposite; bitter, cranky, unappreciative, and angry. According to my friend, there’s almost no-one in the middle. I feel like I have to fight very hard every day to not turn into a bigger a**hole than I already am. My hope for the end of my life is that I become more like Mr. Rogers and less like Squidward from Sponge Bob.
As someone who works with young people, I second lws329’s advice about listening, being humble, and asking questions. One of the reasons why teaching is a perishable skill is that your ways of thinking about teaching and your view of young people can get obsolete pretty damn fast. One of the things I warn my students about at the beginning of every semester is that I’ll be asking a lot of questions about how they see the world, their feelings about technology, labor, capitalism, etc. because I want to make sure that I keep learning about my students in order to be able to be an effective teacher. The minute you care more about what you tell your students than about what they tell you, you should retire. I’m lucky that I have the job that I do. It keeps me on my toes, but it means I get the true blessing of interacting with and hearing from young people on a daily basis. One reason I became a teacher was that I didn’t have a lot of caring mentors when I was young. I was surrounded by adults who, typical for that time and place (South Florida, the 70s/8os) kept offering me lots of advice and never really made time to listen to me. I made the decision early in my life (teenage years) that I wanted to work with young people in large part because I wanted to treat them differently than I was treated. The only people who were really kind to me were teachers and librarians, so that’s the way I went. If, on my deathbed, I can feel good about the things I’ve done to help young people to a greater degree than I feel bad about how cranky and dismissive I was of other people, I’ll count that a victory.
I don’t mind being old (78). But it’s difficult at times. Funerals. Friends losing spouses. Physical and mental degeneration. Care providing.
I still love traveling and doing crazy stuff. But my friends don’t enjoy it as much. Luckily, my family likes seeing the world with me. But I honestly don’t
mind traveling alone. I do wish my body would let me do more crazy stuff. No cruises for me.
I’m really in no position to lecture anybody about child rearing, life goals, etc. I have no reason to bitter. My father was an educator, so I do try to encourage my grandchildren to go to college.
If I had to distill my advice to my future older self into one mantra it would be “remain curious.” (About people, the world around me, culture, news, etc.) The older folks who are difficult seem to be stuck in a provincial mindset, a cocoon of comfort that shields them from modern life. On some level, life should be comfortable like that, but we need a mix of new with the comfortable to remain mentally sharp and socially relevant.
I had an employee who was turning a higher-birthday than the rest of our team, and at her celebration she was asked what her life goal was as she hit this new milestone. She said, “Wear leather well.” That’s another worthy goal.
There’s a fantastic poem about growing old disgracefully:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/warning/
How about Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life.” An anthem for seniors. To hell with growing old gracefully.
If anyone gives unsolicited advice at least mix it with self deprecating humor. Oops, there I go again, passing out advice I don’t even follow!
Lift weights seriously X3 per week, walk a mile on off days, clean up your diet, get your sleep. Why are you still drinking Diet Coke? Why are you still eating meat every day and not just in times of cold&famine? We have met the enemy and he is us. There are usually work-arounds for those w/ chronic conditions. Move!
I found out early as a parent that being a cool older person seldom is successful the way you thought it might be. I thought my youth experience put me in a great position to be a cool older person. I had done three things that in the 70’s were cool and I thought my kids would think so also: I was a high school athlete, I played in a rock band, and I was student body vice president at USU. So, were my kids impressed? Hardly. How about my grandkids? Nope, they’re kind of embarrassed by how badly I am at video games. But I still have a great relationship with my 3 kids and 7 grandkids even though the things that I think are cool show what a dinosaur I am.
larryco – right?? I was never cool as a teen or young adult. I was way too intense. In my 30s, I started to chill out and thought I developed some ‘cool’ traits. But yeah, I’ve also learned that being a ‘cool’ older person has nothing to do with what I’ve accomplished and everything to do with how I treat the youth around me.
Thanks all, for your comments. In my mind, it all boils down to respect for everyone, no matter their age, and being curious (good word to describe the attitude, Angela) about people rather than thinking they need unsolicited advice.
It turns out that the things that were uncool about me as a teenager now help me connect with the students I teach. I was a full on nerd as a kid: read SF&F, dabbled in comic books, loved Star Wars AND Star Trek, quoted Monty Python, the works. (I’m also enough of a nerd to know that technically I am describing geeky things more than nerdy things.) My teenage years were rough socially.
But now that I’m in my 50’s, the fact I can have a deep discussion about the different iterations of Spiderman is something the students love. There is some deep irony going on in my life.
Good points!
A few other things I hope to do throughout my life:
-I really really hope I can keep my independence. P’s advice helps with that! Even so, it’s still something of a crapshoot. So I also intend to accept help I need, and not put a lot on my kids.
-Preparing financially for retirement.
-Compensating people fairly for costs of things.
-Critical thinking skills. I don’t want to fall for scams and misinformation news outlets that target an older population.
-I want to retire my drivers license when it is wise to do so. Choosing carefully where to live will help with that.
Adding a plug for house design and elements that aid independence: few to no stairs, grab bars in bathrooms, ditching throw rugs, lever door handles…
p.s. Thanks to Hedgehog for the poetry link. I’ve heard of the red hat ladies, but didn’t know it came from a poem.