Active Adult Programs

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Aging in our western culture should be viewed as a passage of honor. Each milestone of the aging process should be celebrated and not feared. There should be pride in the fact that we are still alive and able to grow old. For us in the western culture this is not the case. In our culture youth is prized and valued. Just watch TV and see who is glorified and represented in commercials. We are influenced by what we see on TV and what we hear in everyday life.

 

At a very young age we develop negative stereotypes about race, sex, and aging. We are completely unaware that we even acquired them or granted them our unconditional acceptance. The stereotypes are forever frozen in our minds. As we grow, we accept them as truths and live our lives based on them.

 

We pretend that old age can be turned into a kind of endless middle age thereby giving young people a false roadmap to the future. The map does not show them how to prepare their lives for the future. We see this on TV every single day through commercials that show how to turn back the hands of time. People are fixated on how to look much younger than they are.

 

Cosmetic surgery for both men and women is at an all-time high. Most forms of this type of surgery are elective and have more to do with vanity and physical appearance than anything else. Our dependence on cosmetic surgery is a billion dollar plus booming business. Our dependence on cosmetic surgery to hide the visual signs of aging is the sharpest tell-tale sign of our anxiety.

 

We all have been witness to a few well known actresses and other successful figures who have gone through these surgeries. Joan Rivers is one such actress who died from complications during a laryngoscopy and an endoscopy. After numerous cosmetic surgeries Joan’s daughter asked that she discontinue the surgeries. Unfortunately, Joan continued the surgeries.

 

Kanye West’s mother suffered uncontrolled bleeding after breast reduction and tummy tuck surgery. Singer Usher’s ex-wife Tamika almost died from complications related to her surgery. The list goes on and on.

 

In an interview with glamour UK (Jake Smith, 2019) Actress Jamie Lee Curtis said that plastic surgery is wiping out generations of beauty. Also, she said that she hoped a young person would look at her grey hair and wrinkly face and say, “That’s cool that you are who you are.”

 

The negative view of aging is disastrously reinforced by the media. Articles and advertising very seldom show a mature model, even in displaying fashions and designs for women over fifty. Men are typically shown as strong, fit, viral, and young.

 

Nursing home ads ask, “What should we do about mother?” Our denial of aging has its costs and it is not only our elders who suffer. According to a statement made by the late psychologist Erik Erikson, “Lacking a culturally viable idea of old age our civilization does not really harbor a concept of the whole of life.” That fear of aging keeps us from living full lives. (Psychology Today, Learning to Love Growing Old, Jere Daniel, September 1, 1994).

 

We need to find a way to look at aging that moves beyond our cultural obsession of youth toward a realistic acceptance of the aging process. The signs of denial and anxiety over aging permeates every aspect of our lives. We have no role models for growing old gracefully, only for postponing it. Our fear of aging speeds the very decline we dread most and it robs our life of true meaning. We now live and die psychologically and spiritually unprepared and incomplete.

 

The elderly should be seen as a valued asset and not seen as a liability. For with age comes wisdom for having lived the life, talked the talk, and walked the walk. In the Eastern culture, as people grow old families and friends care for them at home until they die. In our Western culture, which is very individualistic, we focus on youth, self-reliance, and individualism. In the Eastern culture, they focus on collectivistic that places value on family, elderly, and traditional age hierarchies.

 

When we can embrace all the stages of life, including death, we can truly embrace life without fear. Proof of a truly developed country lies in the way it not only nurtures its young but also how it cares for its elders equally. Still today, residential care homes operate as a common destination for the elderly in our culture as our society continues to celebrate our youth.

 

Aging isn’t just a biological process, it’s also very much a cultural one. Different cultures have different attitudes and practices around aging and death. These cultural perspectives can have huge effect on our experience of growing old and how well we live our lives.

 

I can remember my daughter being asked by her friends about how old I was. She replied, at the age of six that she “didn’t know but I was pretty old.” I was still in my twenties. Even as a child myself, I had no idea about the stages of life and never thought my parents were ever kids even though they kept saying they were.

 

Today, because our Western culture Celebrates youth and devalues growing old, community senior centers are vital to leading the way and showing the importance of celebrating the vitality of growing older. Just to show us how we do not understand the stages of life and death, we are still working on how to beat death through cryonics.