What a great time it is to be a geezer
Age is on the front pages again.
How could it not be after counsel Robert Hur’s recent report in which he declined to prosecute Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents but presented a damning take of the U.S. president’s cognitive abilities?
“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, wellmeaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
It did not help matters that Biden, in a press conference designed to refute Hur’s assessment, confused the presidents of Egypt and Mexico.
As the New York Times wrote after release of the counsel’s report, “in a single cutting phrase, the report from Robert K. Hur captured the fears of Democrats who hold their breath when Mr. Biden appears in public and the hopes of Republicans, especially former President Donald J. Trump and his allies.”
No matter that Trump is, according to the same newspaper, “a corrupt and confused 77-year-old who’s facing trial on dozens of felony counts in four separate criminal cases and has recently been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation.”
At 81, Biden’s age and competency have emerged as an issue that could decide the future of the world, if it enables Trump — who recently confused his Republican challenger Nikki Haley with former speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and this week “encouraged” Russia to attack the United States’ NATO allies who do not meet defence spending targets — to win the presidency.
Suddenly, then, the media is laser focused on the diminishment that aging eventually, for everyone, brings.
PERCEPTION EVOLVED
You can call this fixation ageism, or simple prudence. I choose to look at it a bit differently.
Not just because my 68th birthday approaches, but because the mere fact that this debate is taking place shows how far the talk around aging has evolved.
Think of it this way: an octogenarian could be elected president of the United States. (Biden was 78 when he took the oath of office, becoming the oldest president in U.S. history.)
The idea alone should be enough to make the greyhaired everywhere rejoice. It should also underscore something that might be getting lost in the midst of the age question: that never before has life offered more possibilities for the demographic group that I like to call the venerables, than it does today.
I know all the arguments to the contrary: inflation is brutal for older people on fixed incomes; the shortfalls in our health care system are hardest on those who need it the most, a large percentage of whom are elderly; the isolation of the pandemic has been particularly hard on older people who feel lonely and ignored.
GOLDEN YEARS, INDEED
On the other hand, even though life expectancy in Canada dropped for the third straight year in 2022, the citizens of this country on average can expect to live nearly 13 years longer than they did in 1950. They are putting those extra years to good use.
A mandatory age for stopping work is mostly gone. Out of economic necessity, but also because they like the feeling of purpose that work gives them, more people are choosing to keep punching the clock past the age when their parents and grandparents headed for the rocking chair.
They talk about “retooling,” trying something new for the next stage of life, rather than retiring.
Or they just find the kind of fulfillment that work once offered in doing things that do not earn a paycheque.
MEDICAL MARVELS
Science is helping make life better for those collecting the OAS.
There are pills for every ailment.
Replacing worn out knees, hips and shoulders makes an active life more possible for members of the venerable class (Pickleball anyone?) A little laser surgery and suddenly you can see the sand trap down the fairway.
Hearing aids don’t just work better, preventing the cognitive problems often linked to hearing loss, they’re more subtle, no longer forcing a person to broadcast their infirmity by sporting a device that resembles a horn of plenty.
It is even possible for those of us who get the senior’s rate at the movie theatre to display a little personal style at a time when dressing your age no longer means a nipple-level beltline and Velcro-fastener shoes.
SENIOR FASHION
I say this because I have it on good authority that some clothing brands realize that older folks are a sizeable customer base.
Witness the proliferation of older fashion models like movie stars Charlotte Rampling, at 78, the face of a recent Massimo Dutti campaign, and 89-year-old Maggie Smith fronting Spanish brand Loewe’s spring/summer 2024 line.
And clothes that favour “being comfortable with who you are” and celebrate “the idea of aging gracefully rather than looking younger.”
Though my sense of style is, dare I say, ageless — meaning it is the same now as it was when Trudeau the elder was prime minister and will likely continue in this vein right until the finish line — I applaud that trend.
Just as I applaud the way that the world has decided that citizens no longer need to be put out on the ice floes when they reach a certain age.
STILL PRODUCING
So, we have Lebron James, at 39 and the elder statesman of the NBA, playing in his 20th all-star game next Sunday.
On March 11, Martin Scorsese, 81, will learn whether he wins his second Best Director Oscar for Killers of the Flower Moon, while Annette Bening, at 64, hopes to win her first Academy award for Nyad.
In May, Stephen King, 76, and the author of more than 60 books will release his latest, a collection of short stories.
That same month, Warren Buffett, at 93, still among the world’s best-known investors, will again address the Omaha, Nebraska annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, the global conglomerate he leads.
Then, on November 5, barring something unexpected — Biden stepping aside for another Democratic presidential candidate; Trump going to jail — the people of the United States will decide which of two old men will lead them.
I personally would take the old dude who is not a convicted felon, even if he is getting up there. Some things age just has nothing to do with.