"You're not old."

Over the past few months, I’ve had several conversations with friends where the topic of aging came up. As we talked, I referred to myself as “old”—which I often do, for reasons I’ve mentioned before here, more than once. But in a few cases, someone resisted my using that label to describe myself. “You’re not old, Janis,” one friend said, insistent in his rejection of the term. In each case, I tried my usual explanatory lines: “Yes I am. It took me a long time to get here, and I don’t want anyone to take those years away” or “The word ‘old’ is just a descriptor, like ‘tall.’ Why wouldn’t I describe myself that way?” My friends’ replies were generally something like, “My uncle is 83. I consider that old” or “You’re young at heart; that’s what counts.”

These folks are generally very thoughtful and very aware of assorted “-isms.” Some of them are, like me, well past the age that many— including movie theaters, sociologists, and service providers—would consider old (or ‘older,’ ‘aging,’ ‘elderly,’ ‘senior’ … pick your euphemism). Yet the word “old” applied to a peer instead of to an amorphous population seems uncomfortable for them. They’re quick to dismiss my claim to being old, as if agreeing would somehow be insulting to me. This sort of response implies—if subtly—that being old is a bad thing, a characteristic you would never attribute to a friend, one you’d deny if it were applied to you. 

These reactions reminded me how prickly the labels we apply can be, especially those that have a long history of negative associations. Using such labels implies a negative judgment. They’re insulting, so denying that they’re true is considered kind, even flattering.

Thinking later about these conversations, I was wishing I had framed my response differently. I wish I had shifted the conversation to one about calling people “young.” We apply that description to people across a very wide age range. We can call a 5-year-old a “young woman” or “young man.” We call the last-born child in a family the “young” one regardless of their age. We talk about people in their 20s, 30s, even 40s as young women/men or young people. And we complement adults of any age—but especially “older” ones—by telling them how young they look, how youthful they seem, how they don’t look their age, how they seem so much younger. We don’t have an age criterion for referring to someone as “young”—like the one my friend had for deeming someone legitimately “old” (83 is old, 68 is not). 

Since “young” is good, we can apply it to anyone without fear of offending them. So, unless “old” is a bad thing, why wouldn’t we be equally comfortable using it as a descriptor? Resisting the label “old” (for myself or for someone else) seems to me to be a clue that the word “old” carries a negative meaning. Maybe that conversation would have made my point more clearly. Maybe that would help us begin to reframe what the word “old” means, resist the assumption that our age is a detriment instead of a marvelous gift.

So who, I ask you, can change all this better than us old folks? I think we have to take the lead, just as other groups have taken the lead in naming themselves. If we can’t interrupt these associations—insist that old is a genuinely fine way to be—then we’ll always have to disguise our age, wish it away, resist claiming it, be grateful when people assure us that it’s just not true of us. More importantly, we’ll have to accept the cultural assumption that we’re only worthwhile if we’re not old.

Not that I don’t have my moments. I sometimes find myself uncomfortable about my age. For instance, I recently went to a conference that included a lot of young participants and presenters. Afterward, I was filling out an evaluation form, and they asked for age. I hesitated. I considered not sending it in. I even considered lying on the age question. As if my age meant my opinion wouldn’t be worthwhile. Now, it’s true that my responses might not be taken seriously because of my age—that would be ageist on the part of the folks reading the questionnaire. But my hesitation, my doubt was my stuff, not theirs.

This whole acknowledging, welcoming, celebrating oldness remains a work in progress. Staying with it will require finding ways to have thoughtful, even difficult conversations with people who are uncomfortable with the topic and eager to erase oldness. Personally, I’ll keep on trying to find a good way to do that. Because I’ve lived a long, full life, and I’m actually not flattered when people dismiss that time as if it were meaningless.