When To Play the Age Card

Does Positive Aging Mean Never Saying You’re Too Old?

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

As a regular reader of The EndGame, you know that the newsletter is all about taking a positive approach to aging. I truly believe that we have more to look forward to than inevitable decline and decrepitude.

But does that mean we can’t complain about our losses every now and then? More specifically, aren’t we entitled, every now and then, to play the age card?

Playing the age card is when you refuse to do something, or ask someone else to do it for you, on account of your advanced age.

Some people can never play the age card. On my short list are President Joe Biden, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Mick Jagger. As soon as they yield an inch to age, all their power and authority evaporates. But my name is not on the list. I think I can yield every now and again without endangering my credibility as an advocate for positive aging.

Temptations

I have been sorely tempted to play the age card, and occasionally have succumbed to temptation, on numerous occasions of late:

1.       It’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 90% humidity and an air quality warning in the red zone, so rather than aggravate my asthma I think I’ll stay indoors.

2.       Son, I’d love to play guitar for two dozen 6-year-olds hopped up on ice cream and cake, but unfortunately my fingers are too stiff to play.

3.       I know exactly who you are, but my CPU needs a little more time to call up your name from memory storage.

4.       Darling, I’d love nothing more than to accompany you to Chicago when you attend that conference, but I find travel more stressful every year.

5.       Hello, Sean, I hope you can help me register online because I’m not a digital native and I can’t for love nor money figure out how to do it on your website.

6.       I can be excused from jury duty now that I’m past 70? You don’t have to ask me twice.

7.       Can you drive? I don’t feel safe driving at night. I tend to see things that aren’t there.

It would be easy enough to play the age card whenever I find it convenient. There’s just one problem: It makes me a hypocrite. Because how can I promote aging as a positive experience and rail against ageist stereotypes of old people as weak and doddering fuddy-duddies on one hand, then turn right around and ask for special privileges because of my age and infirmity?

Well, I have recoiled at being called a hypocrite ever since one of my children hurled that epithet at me and thereby marked his official passage into adolescence.

Fear the Dark Side

But there’s an even worse problem with the easy out: It just might be a sign that my mindset on aging has gone to the Dark Side.

A mindset is a terrible thing to waste – it is powerful in ways we can scarcely appreciate. It is so powerful that thinking negatively about our own aging becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy leading directly to the Doom Cycle. A 2002 study by Becca Levy, Yale University professor of psychology and epidemiology, found that older individuals with more positive self-perceptions of aging lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative self-perceptions. So turning a positive mindset to a negative one is a life-shortening event.

Which returns me to my question: Can I maintain a positive attitude toward aging, yet still decline certain activities because of my age without surrendering to negativity?

You will have to find your own solution that feels comfortable, but after giving the matter quite a bit of thought, here is mine: I make a distinction between those circumstances when age is a legitimate reason to avoid activities, and those when citing age is an excuse to avoid doing something you’d really rather not. Looking back at my seven examples of tempting age-card opportunities, I admit that numbers 2, 4, and 6 were just lame excuses. I could do them, but I just don’t feel like it. They involve stepping out of my comfort zone, trying new things, or just being inconvenienced. On the other hand, numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7 can be justified on the basis of real physical and mental changes I have experienced, all part of the price I accept in exchange for the privilege of living extra years. As long as I only play the age card for legitimate reasons, based on my actual (not imagined) physical and mental limitations, I feel I can do that without feeling hypocritical.

And one more thing: I’ve never cared for that word “hypocrisy.” I prefer to think of my contradictory impulses as “inconsistency” because that sounds only half as bad. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have resolved in my old age to be troubled no more by hobgoblins.

What’s Your Joywork?

Have you found a project or a new venture in retirement that satisfies your needs? I’d love to hear more about it! Contact me at don@donakchin.com.