I have a hypothesis that may on a first reading seem obvious, even trite. Or it may indeed seem faulty. It is that we can only properly grasp what it is to be any age if we are living through it. But this escapes us through the early and middle of the life-course because our attention is essentially elsewhere. We are distracted by the busyness of living, or ‘getting by’. In other words, it is when we are ‘old’, and our worlds have decelerated for us and around us, that we most comprehensively embrace ‘what it is to be the age we are’.
How to elaborate on and illustrate this hypothesis? I will begin by emphasising the salience of the notion of ‘absence’. A large part of our really experiencing the age we are is a function of absence, of what never was or what is no longer. Growing old provides us with undeniably tangible evidence of all the things we missed out on or can no longer do, and therefore of who we else we might have been or no longer are. And there are fewer distractions in our life, so there is more time to reflect.
Of course, younger people, children too, experience absence in these ways, pausing to ponder past episodes or incidents in their lives; and they too regret missed opportunities. But the difference is that they are so obliged by their daily levels of energetic engagement with ‘things to be done’, that they are too busy to be more than momentarily static and reflexive.
The young rarely stop to think about the as-yet unknown territory of adulthood. And while adults know something of what it must be like to be old and can be understanding and empathetic, they cannot, I suggest, really appreciate what being old feels like. Feels, that is, in body and mind. Nor can they grasp its ramifications.
Having sampled every aspect of the life-course up to and including their own, older people know something of all its phases. Unless troubled by the likes of dementia, they will have flash memories of what incidents and happening in phases even long gone were like.
An anecdote. When my daughters were young – three under 10 – we asked my parents to look after them for a few days. They were in their 70s. They did so, and successfully. But my mother later confided that she didn’t think they would be able to do it again. I was taken by surprise. From the vantage point of a parent used to day-to-day dealing with a trio of active children, as it were on automatic, why was it so hard for them? We knew they loved and liked seeing the girls. But as all grandparents learn, you do not run on automatic when caring for grandchildren; on the contrary, you are permanently on guard, on health and safety alert. But that is not all. What I am getting at is that to inhabit (even) the third, let alone the fourth, age is for many of us to discover a gradual shrinking of the capacity to cope. To cope even with what were once, maybe even recently, mundane everyday responsibilities and tasks. Bodily systems are running down and with it any former mental robustness. It is why, as the years continue to roll inexorably by, we withdraw from certain responsibilities and sit in armchairs and drift asleep in front of the TV. Okay, all ages do this. But in old age it is different. It is something that happens to us, a phenomenon slipping out of our control. In middle-age I knew this, as it were theoretically, but I had of course yet to know it experientially. Moreover, my sociological use of verstehen was undercooked.
Being older brings with it the privilege of having sampled all previous phases of the life-course. And if affords first-hand experience of old age itself. Whatever gloss is put on becoming old, it is a narrative of decline. As the fourth age is entered, if we were motor vehicles we would increasingly fail our MOTs, and with good reason. This is not to diminish our importance. Nor it is to accept many of the social and cultural stereotypes foisted on us. There is considerable heterogeneity amongst the elderly after all. But it is to face up to a likely diminution of activity and participation. We tire and are stressed more readily. We may not want to come ceaselessly to terms with doing things for the last ever time, but it will eventually happen.
I am not yet ready personally to ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’. Furthermore, I would be royally pissed off to go in the next few years. Too much to do. But having checked with my joints and assorted vulnerabilities, I must recognise that I am slowly and fatefully in decline. It’s just how it is. If, as Sartre argued, we exist in a state of ‘becoming’ until our deaths, only accomplishing a summative state of ‘being’ upon death, then maybe I have by now developed a reasonable lived understanding of the ups and downs and ins and outs of becoming.