Hermit Diary, Montreal. 5. Age and Wisdom
Two friends in Mexico City, 2016
I'm sure that most of us who are older have been dismayed by incidents and expressions of ageism since this epidemic started. To have to add these micro- and macro-aggressions to our own sense of increased vulnerability seems particularly bruising. When a friend told me that he had heard a young person calling the virus the "Boomer Remover" I literally felt like someone had just hit me. I was also dismayed, this past weekend, to see bars and brunch spots teeming with young people who either hadn't gotten the message about social distancing, or were deliberately flaunting it. And that wasn't just here: a friend in Europe wrote that there had been a moral outrage directed at his country’s "urbanized under-30 cool set, when it was revealed that lots of these people flaunted the curfews with 'F*%# Corona' parties in bars that were ordered closed."
On reflection, I've tried to temper my own instinctive reaction by thinking about the kind of world an under-30 person has inherited. While we praise the idealism and activism of many young people, there are some who are in it merely to maximize pleasure and profit for themselves, and still others who cannot make sense out of a world that, even before the present situation, they perceived as hopelessly polarized, dangerous, disintegrating, and devoid of opportunity. Drug and alcohol dependency is one possible reaction; nihilism is another; despair, depression and even suicidal thoughts are others.
Plenty of young people are not like that, and are certainly not wishing for this virus to cull everybody they consider "old." Maybe they were brought up differently, to be less self-centered; maybe they've been blessed with greater emotional stability; maybe they've had older family members, teachers, mentors and friends who took a genuine interest and helped give them the vital grounding anyone needs in order to become a full and responsible adult, taking their place in a world that has never been safe and secure for everyone. I'd fervently like to hear from younger people who may be reading this: please tell us how the world seems to you in this precarious moment.
Like Premier Francois Legault -- who spoke out to young Quebecers, saying he remembered being young and not wanting to listen to older people, but that this was not the time to have a party, it was a time for all of us to consider one another -- I too thought back to my own childhood and young adulthood. My father was a veteran of WWII, which had ended only a few years before I was born; every adult I knew had lost friends and family in that conflict. I grew up in America during the Cold War, when civil defense drills were a normal occurrence; I was completely convinced that my life would probably end in the blast of a nuclear bomb. After that came Vietnam, which tore the country apart, saw college students my age shot on campus, and had every young male in the country eligible to be called up in the draft. Many who served died; others were left with varying degrees of trauma; others left and went to Canada, or went to jail, or maimed themselves; some (both veterans and not) fell into the same despair and dead-end solutions as I mentioned above. There was a massive "generation gap." During those same years, many of us became early activists for the climate and ecology, choosing to live alternative lifestyles to try to maintain some integrity with our beliefs. And right after that came the AIDS epidemic, which cut down some of the brightest and best people we had known... Since then there have been more wars, leading up to 9/11, and the political, ecological, and human morass in which we find ourselves today. People who grew up in India, or Africa, or South America, or other places on earth, were all shaped by different cultural and political experiences, often much harsher than what I've described.
The thing is, anyone who's older now has seen and experienced a particular version of human history, as well as countless personal traumas, health scares, disappointments, losses, and deaths. Yet we've somehow survived, and a good many of us have actually gained wisdom about life, and being human, from what we've lived through. That wisdom seems sorely needed now, just as much as we older people need the energy and vitality of the young who will carry our hopes for humanity into the future. I'm going to try to share some of that wisdom in these posts, not just in my own words but through the writing of some of my friends.
In conclusion for today, then, here is a short recent social media post from Dick Jones, a former teacher, and continuing poet, musician, and father, who lives in London and is an old and dear friend of mine:
Sometimes I find myself just stopping half way across a room & standing still. I'm not really thinking or reflecting; I'm just feeling worn out, defeated & terribly sad. We've only just rocked & rolled our way out of 3 years of Brexit & climate crisis conflict with all of its attendant disillusionment & disgust - that final exposure of the ethical & ideological poverty, the sheer malignant, self-serving stupidity of power politics across the board. And now some half-biblical, half-shit dystopia movie plague has come rolling in like an invisible fog to gather us all up as if in reckoning for our moral failings.
Well, whatever the clichéd symbolism of Covid-19's busy, relentless work across the small, synaptic gaps between us, it brings with it one equally platitudinous requirement: that we be kind to each other. If 'only connect' now has grim connotations of infection, 'long-distance love' must take its place. The immediate casualties of this silent plague are those whose day-to-day welfare was entirely dependent on the physical proximity of others -- from the barrista dispensing a skinny rush-hour latte, to the elderly emphysema sufferer in the doctor's waiting room. We have to look after each other across the old social, political & cultural barriers. As the traditional transactions become redundant, we have to share -- mutual aid must define the way we live against the temptations of the survivalist siege. It's a choice, but surely an inexorable one...
