I recently posted a photo of myself on Twitter/X with the caption, ’on my way to the pro-Palestinian protest in London’. Unusually for me, it solicited quite some attention, with 7.6 thousand likes and 1.2 thousand retweets. It also provoked a considerable number of responses (which I didn’t bother to count). Many of these were encouraging professions of solidarity, including some heartfelt examples from Palestinians. However, predictably enough, others were critical, though I’m not sure ‘critical’ is the right word. They were almost without exception anonymous name-calling abuse. This was unsurprising and was and remains water off a duck’s back. But what gave me cause to reflect was the ageist aspect of the abuse.
I looked again at the portrait attached to my words. I do indeed look old(er). I am now 75 and I guess I look it: in this photo I even have what might pass for a ‘faraway look’. But what struck me was that my age was being used quite brazenly as a disqualification for any political stance I might hold. There were repeated references to fragility, disability, stupidity, dementia and so on. As a sociologist this should perhaps have been anticipated: I am perfectly familiar with ageism and stereotypes around old age. But it reminded me on a personal level that I am myself now perceived and doubtless treated by many as ‘old’.
There are accompaniments to old age that this passing episode brought into sharper focus. It will be readily agreed that long-term conditions routinely insinuate themselves into old age (I have published a paper on my own and the lamentable lack of GP access it exposed: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1185487). In my case one injury – rupturing my Achilles – and the onset of polymyalgia a couple of years ago between them announced the end of a life hitherto largely free of health constraints. This was admittedly more irritating than ‘statistically’ surprising. But it brought into sharper relief the sense that I had, and to a degree retain, that it will be good to get back to normal healthy wellbeing. The largest part by far of the lives of older people lies behind them. Another way of expressing this is to suggest that their present not only compares unfavourably with their past but their – normal, healthy – past lives on as their primary and obvious reference point. In my case, I do not feel old, or perhaps I should say I don’t feel as old as I obviously look, or indeed am; and I somehow, however irrationally, feel that I will surely regain what – I really know – is lost and gone. In other words, my subjective sense of who I am is at variance with my objective circumstances. I think this is quite difficult for younger people to appreciate, as are its ramifications.
Indeed in many respects the accoutrements of old age are difficult to anticipate other than in a purely abstract manner. I recall that when my parents in their mid-70s looked after three of our young girls for a few days, it exhausted them and they felt they couldn’t do it again (excepting emergencies of course). I couldn’t fully understand this at the time. But I do now. Obviously looking after grandchildren is more tiring that looking after your own children: you do the latter very largely on automatic whereas the responsibility sits more heavily on grandparents. But I had little knowledge then of how tiring and stressful even apparently routine everyday happenings can become in later life. The lifeworld becomes an altogether more cumbersome and awkward arena to navigate. Doubtless there are exceptions to this pattern, but due to a still somewhat enigmatic interplay of biological, psychological and social forces or tendencies most of us, what shall I say, fade.
Two activities I continue to engage in with something approaching fervour are reading and writing. My teaching commitments dwindled into nothingness during COVID when I declined to contribute via zoom; was this too a function of age-related fatigue, timidity or withdrawal? I now read a couple of books a week, many of them works of philosophy, social theory or sociology. And I read in large part to write, or at least with a view to following up in print or blogs. But my writing stints, often on Wednesdays in Dorking cafes like the ‘Cosy Moose’, have become more truncated. Possibly the quiet COVID years played their part. But my stamina has undoubtedly declined: I am more tired after two or three hours writing than I was even a few years ago after five or six hours. I suspect this is in part a function also of, or accelerated by, longstanding individualistic or even eccentric writing habits I’ve unwittingly acquired over the decades. I am often told I write fast. I confess I do, and that, equipped in my café (or bar) of choice with two or three books, a couple of academic articles and my iPhone, I can proceed apace! Moreover, and this is perhaps the trick, give or take a handful of corrections, re-phrasings or additions as I gallop on, my first draft is almost always my last draft prior to submission. I have over time developed a resistance also to making changes, other than obvious corrections or to accommodate notification of research or publications I had been unaware of.
The upshot is that I still make headway, but it takes more out of me. And there are a few other relevant factors that intrude more than they used to. I have commented previously on the risk that ageing academics can end up merely repeating themselves. Typically, this is because they are invited to do so by editors because their work is prominent in a particular domain or field, and it is thought, or hoped, their name adds value and/or readers to journals or books. I feel I have trespassed on the edge of this precipice but am cultivating a habit of declining invitations.
Will I run out of ‘things to write about’? Maybe, though I continue to harbour thoughts of new work, stamina permitting. Most of my ideas have fallen and continue to fall short of translation into bestselling outputs, though this has never troubled me. Currently I have one completed (marginally revised) book with a publisher and another single-authored book proposal with another publisher; the latter is for a volume introducing sociology, social science and health and medical students and practitioners to two or three dozen social theorists via short ‘health-related’ vignettes – and I have long felt I am qualified and could do justice to such a project. We’ll see. I am also still publishing journal articles at a rate or two or three a year. Why, after all my CV is no longer a trigger? I suppose for two reasons: (1) I am habituated/addicted to writing per se (it substitutes for those hobbies many are encouraged and some want to assume on retirement); and (2) prudently or otherwise, I judge that I have no yet run out of either commitment or of ‘things to say’ (or even of ‘things that I earnestly believe need saying’). Fortunately, in Annette I have a partner well versed in medical sociology, in Sasha a daughter occupying a senior post in medical sociology at King’s College London, and in another daughter, Miranda, an active public health practitioner, all of them primed and alerted to step in to prevent me making an idiot of myself. I am currently sufficiently reflexive, via the late and much missed Maggie Archer’s narratives on ‘internal conversations’, to think I retain a voice. But I repeat myself, which carries with it just a hint of vulnerability. I am fading, but I know it and have factored it in. I am, I think, realistic about my diminished and diminishing state of being; and I am not ‘afeared’. Sensibly or otherwise I can still, courtesy in part to Specsavers, see a way ahead; and I retain sufficient physical and mental energy to trudge onwards and upwards.