This is a departure once again from my usual writing. If you could see me, I have on my “serious” face. With an election coming up quickly, along with a number of philosophical issues and decisions to be made, it’s worth a serious discussion of how we, as older Americans, adapt to life’s changes.
One of the things we all have to accept is that time, conditions, and our lives and our culture don’t ever stand still. And they never go back to the past. We all hope that change doesn’t happen faster than we can recognize it and adapt to it, but sometimes, it does. Change can be positive or negative – a step forward or backward. Either way, how open we are to change will tell us much about ourselves – our outlooks and philosophies, and particularly about our character.
Years ago, my late father-in-law, a wonderful man, found it too difficult to put flowers in a raised planter in front of his summer cottage. As the family gardener – the only one in the family actually interested in plants, I volunteered to assume responsibility when he physically was not able. So, I started to put in the new plants that I’d bought, and I could see him looking out the front windows, pointing with his cane, commanding that he “always put three geraniums in the back, and a row of marigolds in the front.” I waved back and smiled pleasantly at him, telling him I was “doing it a bit differently.” Going in a different direction. He shook his head in disbelief. I added several new colors, and a couple of things to add height. He reluctantly accepted my changes, with heavy emphasis on “reluctantly”. To add insult, a neighbor came by and told him how much she liked the “new look”. Disavowing all responsibility, he told her it “was all Tom’s idea”.
I recently read a new bestseller, Erik Larson’s “The Demon of Unrest”. It tells the story of events leading up to the start of the Civil War and the attacks on Fort Sumter. It’s eye-opening in the sheer depth of conviction that Southern society had to slavery. I’d thought it was just an economic necessity, but no. Southern planters were convinced that theirs was the “perfect” social structure, and further, that African slaves were quite happy with their position in it. This despite the reality that slavery was an outdated, inhumane practice by the mid-1800’s, and that Africans had been literally captured and brought here chained to the bowels of ships. The practice was disappearing everywhere else in the Western world. Yet here we are in 2024, some folks are still waving the Confederate flag, proclaiming white supremacy, and having difficulty understanding Civil Rights and coming to grips with racial equality. There may be no chance that they’ll understand that immigration is replenishing our physical workforce, and is actually a good thing. There was an interesting segment on a recent television journal show, in which the owner of large agricultural holdings in Florida talked about the demand, and the absolute need for farm labor that immigrants are filling, and are willing to fill. He stated boldly that without them, America’s agriculture will collapse. Iowa too was in a quandary heading into the political caucuses last January, because their extensive meat-packing plants are staffed by South American workers. And yet, how often have we been told that the folks coming into this country are evil, here to suck up our resources and bleed America dry. Change is hard, and ideas come to be so firmly embedded, or repeated continually to instill fear by leadership candidates, as to provoke strong resistance and reaction.
As we get older, we cling to patterns of taste, behavior, intellectual outlook. We become comfortable with our practices and our routines. We become like Sheldon Cooper on the television show, “Big Bang Theory”, with his place on the couch, telling anyone who sits there, “that’s my spot”, and his pajama routines. But it’s not always just about comfort. Fear of what’s unknown, and worse, a lack of understanding, take over. We see our “rightful” claims to autonomy eroding, and we feel powerless to stop it. We see new technologies vastly expanding what we do and how we do it. Who envisioned that we’d never have to balance a checkbook again, or we could pay all of our bills online? Or that we’d even need to go into the bank to deposit or cash a check? That roadmaps would be obsolete, as new navigation technology becomes the norm, or that our cars tell us how to back up? It’s all so much easier, faster, safer, and more efficient. But do we truly trust it? I can’t envision a time when our family will have a self-driving car, because my wife doesn’t even let me use cruise control. But it’s coming, and will most likely make driving for many seniors much safer. It will allow older folks (like me) to continue getting out and about.
I enjoy those commercials with slightly older children, sitting in the porch rockers, lamenting that they “never had high-speed internet”. And I particularly like the younger ones inside, responding, “We can hear you, you know.” Marketing gold. Trusting the new has always had its detractors. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, a movement called the Luddites tried to resist mechanization of the textile industry by staging protests and damaging weaving machines. Changes are scary, requiring a degree of faith. And we may not see the benefits immediately. We need to believe, for example, that climate change is real and not just a “theory”. We see evidence of it every night on the news, when we hear “severe storms hitting . . . .”, and “forest fires sweeping through . . .”. Yes, centuries of burning fossil fuels are contributing factors. We spray chemicals on our lawns so they look like a green carpet, and then wonder what happened to the birds, the bees, and the butterflies.
New ideas and technologies don’t ever come without downsides. The Industrial Revolution generated great wealth for some, new employment opportunities for many, and generally a higher standard of living. But it also launched a new era of environmental damage – air and water pollution, destruction of animal habitat, deforestation, the ozone layer disappearing and oceans warming. It accelerated wealth inequities and patterns of migration that exist and still frighten many of us today. We sometimes have to take the good with the bad, finding ways to correct the unintended consequences. Many people are doing just that. They are working to develop new medical treatments for newly identified diseases and conditions. They are developing new energy sources to transport us, or keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. They are working to clean up the environmental messes of the past, trying to make us aware of the dangers we’ve created. They are working to create new building designs and materials to resist catastrophic events like hurricanes, tornados, floods, forest fires, and earthquakes. They are working to separate truth from fiction, because we’re bombarded daily with untruths, and to help us decide that which we need to believe and that which we shouldn’t. And, many are helping to protect us from those that would take advantage of us, swindle or defraud us, or at a minimum, to mislead us and cause us harm.
A dear friend is currently in Thailand on a tour, sending back exciting pictures of her adventures. Earlier this year, she went to Poland to see the salt mines and visit Auschwitz. Before that, she was in South Africa, where she went on safari. Yes, she could have been sitting home, but she chose to experience new things, create opportunities of exposure to new cultural adventures, to increase her knowledge of the globe and its infinite variety. She is semi-retired, and has the time to explore, and the wonderful curiosity that finds satisfaction and joy in travel and exploration.
Am I a Luddite for still having and using a landline phone? Perhaps. For driving a car that has neither a back-up camera or onboard navigation? Probably. I’ll support what I can, manage the new to the extent that I can, but at the very least, I am open to new ideas, and can embrace the future with its infinite possibilities, because I believe firmly that the “golden age” is always ahead of us, not some fiction of the past. Once again, as the t-shirt says, “Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.”
I'm Thinking...No! 