TIME OUT:Ageism is used as a tool to undermine people, writes MARIE MURRAY
AGEISM IS a deep prejudice. It is based on faulty premises. It categorises people once they have put a few decent decades behind them. Ageism defines by age rather than ability. And the age at which one is designated “old” gets younger and younger in a society where fear of ageing arises earlier and earlier.
At this rate, by the time people have reached a mere half-century, in an era when achieving a century is common, they can be designated “old”. And the problem of being old is not that one is old but that one is young, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde. The problem with age is not age but the negative stereotypes that surround it.
That is what makes ageism so irritating. It is patronising. Its images are incorrect. The reality of age as it is lived also challenges those images, but too often go unchallenged. Like most stereotypes, those designated know the stereotype is false, but you have to be “older” to know that. You have to be older to qualify as “old”. And by the time you have arrived to that stage, which others call “past it”, you are no longer regarded as capable of speaking about where you are, in the eyes of those who think you might not even be sure of that.
The psychological impact of all stereotypes is that they undermine people. They shape attitudes. They exclude. Stereotypes are difficult to rebut because refutation is often seen as protestation that confirms what it challenges. This is what the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard explicates in the dilemma of Le Différend, a condition in which one suffers injustices of definition that cannot be addressed.
Ageism is often assumptive, sometimes vexatious, usually ignorant and most annoying when it is patronising. It is frustrating to be patronised when one is not in need of sympathy but in need of respect. It is irksome to be negatively connoted.
Age is not about decline. It is about progression. It is about progress through life, past its stages, through its challenges, into what life continues to offer, extending experience, accumulating friendships, acquiring skills, expanding knowledge and undertaking adventures. It is about engaging in life to the full because as we pass through time we gain appreciation of the passage of time and the importance of using it well. As we get older it is not that we are sad that youth has passed, but that we are lucky to have also lived past youth.
We pass through the portal of childhood into adolescence. While some may look back on adolescence as an agonising time, there was often ecstasy in the agony. It was intense. It was life lived. It was good to be in and good to move past. Would we go back there? Probably not. Would we have missed it? Probably not. If we liked it, we are glad we were there. If we hated it, we are glad we are past it.
That is why I want to write in defence of being “past it”. I want to tell those who have not arrived at what is called “past it” that they are not yet at what can be really good stages in life. I want them to know that it is great to be young. But it is also great to grow: to get older and older and older. It is good to be given time.
Time is not to be feared but to be enjoyed. Time is a privilege. To be whatever age we are is a licence to live, and living it up is precisely what people who are designated old usually do. Each stage of life that we pass through is to be appreciated, acknowledged and acted upon and no stage should be stereotyped. We celebrate birthdays, not because we are getting younger but because we are getting older. We have been given another year.
I like the notion of “past it” because it says how many things we have passed through. You cannot go past what you have not encountered. To be “past it” is to have come across situations, entertained, enjoyed and moved past them to the next opportunities life gives us to enjoy if we are lucky enough to reach them.
Clinical psychologist Marie Murray is the director of student counselling in UCD. Her weekly radio slot Mindtimeis on Drivetimeon Wednesdays on RTÉ Radio One