Overview
Where do we get all our negative views about aging? One might say that it ‘s natural to fear and even to hate the idea of aging. I mean who wants to get old? But is it natural, really? Those in the eastern world look forward to aging. For them it will be a time of increased respect. The young will look up to them. I once heard a Chinese philosopher, whose name I unfortunately can’t recall, say, “Life begins at sixty-two.” How differently we in the west might view our approaching older years if we believed that!
Since the East has a totally different view about getting old our Western negative attitudes cannot be the result of some natural biological process. So why do we hold on to these views? Certainly we’ve been influenced by the cultural values we’ve been raised to believe as truths. It’s a cliché to say that we in the West worship youth. But is there something more to it than that?
The myths we hold onto about Aging
In the west our culturally induced negativity toward ageing is spurred on by repeating to each other myths that have been found to be untrue.
1. The Retirement Trauma
The retirement trauma is the belief that when older people retire from “productive” work they will inevitably experience boredom, poor nutrition, and loneliness. This so-called trauma that was once considered the norm even by social scientists, has been found to be prevalent in only a small minority of retired elders.
2. Isolation in old age
There is a belief that along with aging comes an inevitable loneliness and isolation. However, studies have found that this is not the case. Those who experience the greatest amount of loneliness are those in the twenty to twenty-nine year old age group. As a matter of fact, the geriatric researcher, Tornstam found that loneliness decreased as age increased. He went on to find that although the general belief is that our modern life style isolates the elderly from their children, the reverse is true. Today’s elderly tend to be in close contact with their families. The isolation that we hear about applies only to a small portion of the elderly.
