WINDSHIELDS AND REAR-VIEW MIRRORS

      "I'm going to pay attention to the view through the windshield and not be looking in the rear view mirror."  A client was reflecting on his intended response to his former wife's desertion and decision to divorce.  He used this automobile metaphor to describe how he planned to approach his future ... by looking ahead without undue preoccupation with their past.

     Acknowleding his need for a 'clean windshield' , he further decided that he could not navigate life relying primarily on the mirror of the past.  As a therapist, I think it's necessary to ask whether we can learn from 'what's back there' while avoiding 'living in the past'.  A former church member learned to drive when in her 80's. At her funeral, I said that her always avoiding the reverse gear was the perfect description for how she had lived.

   The Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, claimed that life could be understood only by looking backwards but had to be lived looking ahead.  Maybe that is a good approach. Avoiding 'learning from the past' risks head-on collisions in the present. Car mirrors do warn us that "OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR". Too much nostalgia, a homesickness for the past, can blur and distort reality of the 'right now'.  Having once been an academic historian, I have observed many instances when a longing for 'the good old days' led to disastrous conseqences, for individuals and for entire nations.  Often for their own benefit, individuals and groups deliberately misrepresent matters from the past.  Examples abound in partisan politics, especially around election times.

    Maybe the 'meaning' of windshields and rear-view mirrors has to do with balance --- an honest appraisal of the past and a clear view  of what is ahead of us.

      Satchel

"Maybe it is time you started acting your age"

                   "Maybe it is time you started acting your age"

     Jay's doctor "half jokingly" told him that as he treated the onset of sciatica. Jay has barely passed the age to receive Social Security benefits if he chose to do so. Telling someone to 'act their age' or to speak of 'age appropriate behavior' constitute forms of Ageism: "discrimination where people are mistreated based on their age." (An online definition).  For me, it echoes 'how old is old ?' and if you have seen one old person, you have seen ONE OLD person'. While there seems to be no 'cure' for getting older ('beats the alternative' is the usual quip), stereotyping and condescending words and actions based on age are insulting.  

    'Time to start acting your age' or 'what do you expect at your age ' might mean that it is time to get a new doctor or a new fill in the blank  who shows respect despite the number of birthdays one has celebrated.  

   Yep, I have had 86 birthdays and so has my Orthopedist and we each have skills and abilities that have diminished with years.  Yet, we each continue to practice our professions with a high level of competency.  The same is true for many older persons. Skills that are used tend to remain sharp.

    In her book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, Ashton Applewhite wrote of  Global Wrinkling and its many implications. There is an unacknowledged anxiety abroad about getting older that finds 'scapegoats' in order to lessen the reality of one's own eventual mortality.  Bravado, bluster and botox do not long hide the reality of passing time.In an earlier post, I wrote that "old age is not a definite  biological stage. The chronological age designated as old varies culturally and historically."

   Getting older does not mean ageism is acceptable.

          Satchel