What does it mean to grow older in America?

In America, the public narrative for growing older is grim.  Aging is mostly seen as a dread and expensive nightmare that we must begin preparing for when we are very young. We are bombarded with medications and proceedures, warehoused into nursing and urgent care facilities, then blamed by society for not being able to afford our lives.

In the culture, older people exist only in the context of health care, long-term health insurance, entitlements, nursing homes and pills and surgeries, downsizing and  IRA’s. Older people have vanished from TV, media, movies and magazines, and are mostly portrayed in  horrific ways in novels as doddering, sexless fools. Since we have the shortest time left in our lives to spend money, we are the Corporate Nation’s least desirable demographic, unless you are a pharmaceutical or health insurance company. Older people have vanished from public consciousness in any meaningful way other than draining the collective treasury.

The only time I ever see anyone my age on TV is when he is having that friendly chat with his nice, white-coated physician who has tons of time to talk to him. Love without medication is just presumed to be an impossible dream for older people, there are no images of that kind of love anywhere in our world.

I decided a long time ago that this would not be my narrative, that I would not accept this path that the Fear Machine that runs America chose for me. There is no room in the Corporate Nation for anything that does not have long-term buying power. I saw I needed my own voice, my own identity, that I needed to reject almost every single idea the culture present to me about aging, about growing older, about what I could do and should so, about what I had and needed to have.

I am grateful for my decision, it was a good one for me. I did find love, and I also found sex without pills, I might not be able to do all of the things I once did, but I am creative when I need to be, I think older men can be wonderful lovers, often  more sensitive than their younger versions. I hope so.

I started a blog to give myself a voice, so that I would not be defined by the view of me held by publishing, politics, the media or the culture beyond. And my voice online is loud, my blog is moving towards 200,000 visits a month, there are nearly 15,000 likes on my Facebook page, I am accepting subscriptions as payment for my work. I am happy to say that many of my readers are young, we are all quite comfortable together. I am the only one defining me, not the many institutions crowding around to diminish me and make me small.

I refused to let the health care system decide by itself what health is for me. I accept some forms of conventional treatment – as in diabetes care – and refuse most of the tests that would draw me into a life of pills, pharmaceutical visits and the idea of myself as fragile human being in need of constant medication and nurturing. This requires a constant balance in our world, it is a never ending challenge.

I do not talk about my health, monitor myself constantly.  I do not tell struggle stories or wallow in grief, I do not dwell in the past or focus on what I have lost  rather than what I have.

I have not downsized my life, I have broadened it – re-marrying, buying a new farm, getting a donkey in need of saving, getting a dog from Ireland, taking up teaching,  hospice work, therapy work with veterans, and new forms of media that support my work – podcasts,  e-books, social media, teaching, videos, open groups on Facebook.

My story is not about a perfect life, it is about a life that is of my own choosing, in which I give voice to myself, construct my own narrative for life. Growing older is a challenge and a joy. As Joseph Campbell said,  I am finally learning who I am and how to help other people in a bounded and appropriate way. So many of life’s battles are behind me, even as some of the biggest ones remain. As I choose to live meaningfully, so I will work to choose to die well.  I do not have IRA’s and long-term health care, I do not have money in the bank, I have refused to trade a life I love for one other people think I might need. This, for me, is the challenge of growing older in America.