I am old. I’ve reached a point in my life where there’s no denying it (not that I ever denied it anyway). People offer me their seat on the bus. I get a discount at the rec center, on transit, and when I go to the movies. I get to board the BC Ferries for free.
Those are the perks. But there’s also a down side, even beyond possible declines in health. In many ways, ‘ageism’ is one of the last prejudices for society to come to terms with. People are effectively written off, ignored, and sent ‘out to pasture’, simply because of their age. In many ways, it’s like old people are invisible – the young pass us by as if we weren’t there.
One positive view of old people that hasn’t been completely abandoned, is that we are ‘wise’. Are older people actually wise? Probably not – at least not any more so than anyone else. But it seems to me that we have one ‘super-power’ that no one else has.
We have traveled to other dimensions, to alternate realities.
Old people are like walking, talking Rick & Morty episodes. Curious about what it would be like if there were no cell phones? I can tell you. And I wouldn’t be guessing – I actually know, because I lived for many years in a dimension where they didn’t exist. What about a world without computers, hand-held calculators, the internet, credit cards. Yep, I explored dimensions where those items either didn’t exist at all, or were beyond the reach of the average person.
I’ve experienced a reality where the human population of the planet was less than 3 billion. I’ve traveled to a dimension where the Amazon rainforest was largely intact, one where the oceans contained almost no plastic, one where many now extinct animal species still roamed the Earth, and one where throwing your possessions in the garbage just because you were tired of them was a mortal sin.
In a sense I suppose that does make me, and people my age, wise. It’s not that we’re smarter. It’s just that we’ve experienced exotic alternate realities that are hard for other people to comprehend. The good news is that we can advise people on expected outcomes if something similar comes along. Of course, no two dimensions are exactly alike, but there are enough similarities to make our observations of value.
For instance, I’m not at all shocked by the current high interest rates, because I lived through realities (more than one, in fact) where they were as high or higher than they are now. I know exactly what it was like. In fact, I lived through a dimension in the early eighties where the rates were above 20%. People with mortgages were walking away from their homes because they couldn’t afford the payments. In that reality, my own first mortgage was 11%, and that was considered a good deal.
Since we’ve experienced these realities, old people can also advise whether it would be desirable to avoid a particular state or return to a one we were in before, and what it might take to accomplish either.
There’s a saying that ‘Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’. That is equally true for those who have never experienced the past. So, if you want to be enlightened about these other ‘dimensions’ – these alternate realities that are beyond your experience, maybe you should try talking to an old person, like me.
Photo © Judah Grubb Dreamstime.com
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