We should all learn to share the experience with others.
OK, I need to preface this article by saying that, in today’s world, I am not old. I am constantly being told that 60 is the new 40 and that ‘old’ now starts in your mid-70s. Yet, even with that optimistic outlook, since turning 60, I have noticed a few things about ageing that no one ever tells you about.
In fact, I was discussing this with my doctor after a month of various tests for ailments that appeared out of nowhere and, after ruling out anything sinister, his diagnosis was “you are just getting old”. Various analogies of beat-up classic cars and vintage jukeboxes pursued, but the bottom line was that as you age your body stops working as well.
I shouldn’t be surprised by this revelation and, indeed with a few lifestyle and diet changes, the old body soon returned to working, roughly, as it should, but it did get me thinking about how little we share with each other details of the catalogue of age-related disorders that start revealing themselves as the decades pass.
“My sister, three years my elder, laughed and told me that I would never get up from a chair again without groaning”
I remember when I turned 50, I asked various people what’s different once that landmark is reached. My sister, three years my elder, laughed and told me that I would never get up from a chair again without groaning and one of my work colleagues, who was 15 years my senior, told me that my very existence would pivot upon never being too far away from a bottle of Gaviscon (antacid) tablets. Both were uncannily right.
But the point of this article is that I had to coerce this information from them; it’s as if there’s an unspoken alliance of everyone over 50 never to speak of the ills that accumulate as you age. Why aren’t we more open about talking about these things?
Fair to middling
I suppose that it’s possible we Brits have been conditioned to understating our physical condition all our lives. Ask a Brit how they are and they will tell you that they are “fair to middling” or that they “can’t complain” or that they “aren’t too bad”. And the same response will apply even if they’re having the best day of their lives or they’ve just received the worst news ever. We don’t differentiate or open up.
But, then again, you could say the same is true of Americans and Australians, albeit with them it is even more extreme, as every day and everything in their lives is “great” or “awesome”, regardless of how they’re really feeling. So, we are all unlikely to reveal when we’re really ill and hurting; we hide behind pleasantries.
The end result is that we’re all destined to discover the advent of ageing without any warnings. The aches, the creaks, the exhaustion, the pains, the toenails that in grow, the back that stiffens, the tooth that dies and, with it all, the accompanying slowness of recovery. All of these are signposts that will be uniquely revealed to each of us and yet they are as common as April showers.
The growing old manual
Why do we do this to ourselves? In business, sharing of experiences is the bedrock of corporate success. In education, the whole remit is the passing of knowledge to the next generation and even in relationships there is a whole industry purporting to understand the intimacies of true love.
Yet, with the aches of age, we remain silent. I’m not talking about serious life-threatening illnesses. In the past two to three decades, the health service has done wonders in increasing our awareness of the tell-signs of a host of conditions such as strokes and seizures and cancers and, of course, latterly Covid. In fact, it could be said that for a drama merchant such as myself, they have done that too well, as I regularly conflate a couple of minor age-related symptoms into a terminal prognosis.
“Even the most discerning surfers find information to reaffirm our specious viewpoints”
The internet itself is a dangerous depository of medical knowledge; some of it based in science, but a lot of it is based on misinformation or outright fantasy. As with all things, we should only look at the verified legitimate sites (eg, the NHS pages), but undiscriminating search engines offer us a host of less-reliable clicks. And as a result, even the most discerning surfers find information to reaffirm our specious viewpoints. For example, I remember when I was at my heaviest, this 17 stone protagonist once thought I was anorexic as the definition of such was ‘someone who looks in a mirror and sees a fat person’. Fitting facts to match our insecurities is a result of us failing to discuss the real ailments that come with age.
Those ailments are the regular and common-to-everyone physical changes that happen as we age. There should be a manual for those which everyone can refer to and gain comfort that their chronologically generated discomforts are shared by all and sundry, and just a natural progression through the Shakespearian seven ages of man.
The age-old conclusion
So, what do we do about it? We can start by being a bit more honest with each other. Joking aside, when someone asks how you are and you’re not feeling good, tell them. Not with any self-pity or annoyance that you’re struggling a little bit, but just with honesty. Now, human nature is that it will cause consternation with some and dismissal from others, but a few of us will listen more and learn about the ageing to come. The great thing about ageing is that it brings wisdom and, for most, an inner contentment at odds with the angst of being young. But that comes at a price and on a daily basis we will hurt a little and ache a bit, but given that it happens to everyone, shouldn’t we all share the map that we’re all set to follow?
