There are no guardrails on the people mover

I’ve written before about this image I have of life as a people mover, a moving sidewalk of sorts. We all get on at birth and ride along until our turn comes to rotate off the end. I find this image helpful because it reminds me that there are people coming along behind my cohort, folks who are now in the early stages of finding their place in the world, folks who are at the peak of their adult lives, and folks slowly moving along in various ways toward the step-off moment. It puts my life in perspective as part of an ongoing flow that includes, but isn’t centered on, me. But this simple image misses an important reality: not everyone travels smoothly to the end of the ride. There are no guardrails on the people mover. People can—and some do—slip off along the way.

Recently, I’ve been reminded of this truth by a series of illnesses and deaths among people I know, mostly people around my age. I’m also reminded of it when I hear stories of people who die much younger than I am of illnesses, accidents, homicide, suicides. People frequently step off the people mover not at the end, but sideways, because there are no guardrails.

I’m tempted to wrap all such endings in language like “they died too soon.” And for those who know and love these people (and usually for the people who pass), that seems self-evidently true. From our pained, grieving perspective, it is unquestionably too soon. Still, from the perspective of life’s inevitable trajectory, indifferent as that may be to our feelings, no time is correct or wrong. The end can come at any time.

It can happen to any of us, any day, expected or not.

It seems that as we age, my friends and I are more and more aware of this uncertain certainty, more prone to acknowledging it. “It could be any of us,” we say. Tomorrow. Today. “You never know.” That’s always been true, of course. From its beginning, life’s continuation was always uncertain. But with age, the increasing proximity of life’s inevitable end surely makes us more keenly aware of its tentative, contingent quality. And then periods like this happen, and the message seems to be everywhere.

On one level, these recent, personal reminders of the absent guardrails serve as alerts, insisting that I not take living for granted, that I appreciate each day I have here, because those days are numbered. For all of us. And we don’t know what the number is.

And on another level, it strikes me that what we’re wrestling with, what we’re trying to get a handle on is so much more poignant. It’s the fact that, to mix metaphors, our image of life as a continuous path leading off into some obscure sunset is flawed. The banks on either side of the path may be steep and unstable, and it is really, actually, painfully, inescapably true that none of us knows when we might slide off. Truly grasping this reality is a tough task, at least for me. I only sometimes “get it.” Usually, I just mutter the right things about “any of us, any day” without fully grasping the fragility of my position on this planet. It’s a protective thing, I’m sure. But sometimes, when these experiences with illness and death pile up—which they increasingly do as we age—I feel the futility of the defense.

At those moments, I really need to talk to someone else who genuinely gets it. Sometimes I need to cry at the loss and the fear and the stark reality of it. And then I need to look around my life and be grateful for another day—or another moment—to cherish my time here. To appreciate the ride while I’m still on it.

I suppose to some folks, this may sound morbid. Some might even worry about my state of mind. But it’s not, and you needn’t. For me, at least, occasional existential encounters of this sort are part of aging, part of taking stock of where life has brought me and what life in this place looks like. On another day, soon, I’ll be marveling at the sky or the wind or the amazing artistry of a local chorus or the vibrancy of queer youth.

Life’s like that—it’s complicated. 

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Changing the world (and missing a beat)

We just got back from the Creating Change conference in Houston. I’ve mentioned this conference before. It’s the annual gathering of LGBTQ activists sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (aka “The Task Force” or NGLTF). The Task Force is a genuinely progressive, grassroots national LGBTQ rights organization, and this conference is always correspondingly inspiring and uplifting. Weather-wise we were really lucky—we arrived in Houston just as they thawed out from the last freeze and left just before their next cold spell. “Cold” being a relative term—it was supposed to be in the mid-40s I think. We arrived to the bright white snow and icicles of Colorado’s own “cold” spell, all 10° of it.

            

But back to Houston … Creating Change is always a lively and energetic conference, in part because it brings together the single greatest concentration of LGBTQ youths I’ve ever experienced in one place. There are hordes of them moving around in little herds, crowding the lobby and the aisles, chatting in animated groups. They seem beside themselves with the sheer pleasure of being with scores of their queer peers at an event specifically dedicated to queer life and queer politics. It’s an environment where they can be totally, outrageously themselves—and that’s just what they do. Frankly, it makes me tired just watching them. I mean that in a good way.

Being immersed in all this youth presence is always one of my favorite parts of Change. It reminds me that there are plenty of folks behind us on the people mover, younger folks filling in the places as the old activists slow down and rotate off the end. Sure, the younger folks see the world differently. Sure, they won’t do the movement like we do/did—heck they’re already not doing it like we do/did. But that’s the point. They can do it differently because we did it at all. And they should do it differently because it’s not the same movement as it has been in the past. After all, the point is precisely Creating Change.

Here are two examples of that. First, the standard official welcome to the city was issued by Houston’s three-term lesbian mayor, Annise Parker, who campaigned from the start as an openly lesbian candidate. When I was these kids’ age, such a candidacy would have been unimaginable. But now, “out” politicians are almost commonplace—along with out news reporters, out sports figures, and out performers. A second hit of how the world has changed came in the form of the keynote speaker, Laverne Cox, the transwoman actor who plays a leading role as a transwoman prisoner in the currently fabulously popular Netflix series, “Orange is the New Black.” Both that role and an out transperson's playing it would have been unthinkable until recently, both because the very concept of transgender identity existed only in the most limited ways and because any portrayal of trans identity would likely have presented it as a disordered state. But now, with Laverne Cox as the most visible representative of perhaps the least represented of LGBTQ identities, LGBTQ roles and LGBTQ actors are common on screens large and small. The world is changing. And this particular corner of the world is changing really fast. So it’s both inevitable and right that these youths’ movement will be—already is—different from ours. Being at Change reminds me of that, every single year.

Many parts of the conference pointed to other sorts of changes in the movement. In a very heartening way, the movement seems to have matured enough that it (we) can begin to look beyond our own pain and our own needs. We can begin to participate in the broader agenda of progressive social change for a wide range of groups—an agenda of which the LGBTQ movement is a part, but only a part. Not all branches of the movement are doing this—at least not yet—but the folks at Change sure are. For instance, there’s growing emphasis in the program on issues like immigration, poverty, and reproductive rights. There’s more attention to sexism and racism inside as well as outside the movement, and more mention of the awful irony that LGBTQ people’s rights were expanded by the Supreme Court on the very day that the same Court rolled back the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action.

This shift strikes me as a rough parallel to individual development—similar to when individuals outgrow their adolescent preoccupation with themselves and their own individual lives and start to see the world through a broader perspective. Perhaps the LGBTQ movement is maturing beyond the more self-obsessed period of its own development. This conference meta-message left me encouraged by our collective movement forward and outward and reassured that the queer people mover is well populated with good-hearted and right-minded people of many ages.

But my sense of the conference is not without disappointment. In particular, I was sorry to witness—and to experience—in this apparent progressive oasis the same sorts of ageism I encounter elsewhere. I say it’s the same as elsewhere, but I actually wonder if this phenomenon at Change (and maybe in the queer movement more broadly) is aggravated by our focus on youth, which I find generally so laudable. The organizers of Change have clearly worked hard to welcome youth and to encourage their active involvement. This is excellent for so many reasons—queer youth have so few places where they can congregate en masse and feel genuinely “normal” instead of marginalized. Also, this movement is theirs, too—they will inherit the fruits of what happens now, so they should rightfully be involved in it. Besides, the extra emphasis is needed to overcome our long history of not including youth in LGBTQ activities or organizing—largely because of old myths and stereotypes (e.g., about adults “recruiting” or “initiating” youths) that made us fear we would be wrongly judged or that youth would be wrongly stigmatized. So it is wonderful that youth are so involved, so eagerly embraced, and so highlighted at the conference. Still, this intense focus may contribute to my sense that people who are not youth—especially those of us toward the other end of the age spectrum—are marginalized by the ageism that floats around in our culture, including in LGBTQ communities.

Whatever the source of this ageism, I was aware of it at Change. It showed up frequently in the clear sense that my comments were less noticed and less valued because of my age. In the failure of folks in elevators to greet me and banter with me in the way that they did with younger folks. In the scant programming around aging, most of which was about medical issues, the need for aging services, and similar topics that generally presented old LGBTQ lives as framed by nothing but decline, disability, and dependence. But it especially showed up, and glaringly, in the acceptance speech of a filmmaker who was given an award for “Gen Silent,” a movie about old queers—about “really old” LGBTQ people, he said, “like 60.” Throughout his talk, he referred to these LGBTQ elders as “they,” and he addressed the audience as the “we” who must take care of “them.” Now, if you’re young and don’t get why this feels bad, just imagine being talked about as if you weren’t present and as if your only role in others’ lives is as someone who needs their help. The fact that the “really old” age of 60 passed some of us by many years ago left me wondering about his assessment of our place in his world. However well intended, his comments felt invisibilizing, dismissive, and patronizing. I could almost feel the kindly pat on my graying head as he talked to others about me. And this from a man whose award was for a film about aging, a person whose perspective is presumably honored by the organizers.

Now, to be fair, this discomfort didn’t weigh heavy on me through most of the conference—it just cropped up occasionally and left me wincing. It’s not an awful problem. It’s just that the context of the generally clear intention to be inclusive at every possible level, I’d have hoped it wouldn’t happen here. I actually whimpered about this concern in my comments about Change last year, but I didn’t figure out a way to address it at this year’s conference. I would love to see something more positive, celebratory, and educational—not about elder care and dying, but about old LGBTQ folks’ engagement in the world and about our varied, complex lives. Creating Change will be in Denver next year. I would like by then to have identified some way to address this issue.

Meanwhile, one incidental but valuable outcome of the conference was a (slightly) more expansive view of Texas. It turns out that Houston actually has a very active LGBTQ community with numerous queer organizations and publications. A hint of their history was posted in the form of posters strung across a long wall of windows in the conference space (excuse the feeble picture—shooting directly into the Houston haze-covered sky):

Houston also has a creative/progressive bent that reminded me a bit of Boulder (OK, only a little bit), with a focus on environmental issues, community engagement, public art, etc. Just across from the hotel where we stayed is a community park called “Discovery Green,” where I walked around for a bit one day. The park, which is largely run by a non-profit, showcases public art (like the huge balloons suspended in trees shown below) and provides a whole bunch of free programming, including festivals, interactive art projects, music, yoga, recreational activities for kids, etc. During winter, a lot of the programming happens at the park’s ice rink. As you can see from the picture below, “ice” rink takes on a new meaning in Texas (check out the ice near the skater's feet). While we were there, they were having a weekend fund-raising fair complete with free music, food vendors, local artisans, face painting, and a swarm of people. As you can see, a few even went “ice” skating. 

Now, the strong LGBT community and the promise of sloppy ice and public art at Discovery Green weren’t sufficient to persuade me that Texas would be a great place to live. 

But they did remind me to notice what I might miss if I let my biases run the show.

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People mover reset

Recently, I wrote here about a recurring theme—the idea of a "people mover" that transports folks along through life, with each generation replaced in due course by the ones behind them. That particular post, named "Why we need the people mover," may have left a misperception that I want to correct. So, here's my understanding of what some folks may have (mis)understood ... along with an attempt to understand why my meaning may have been unclear ... all followed by another try at what I really meant to say. Which isn't as complicated as it sounds.

First, here's what I fear folks may have heard/read in my words: "Old people need to realize that it's our turn to rotate off the end of the people mover, pack up our old-fashioned perspectives, and get out of the way of younger folks behind us." In short, I fear that people may have understood me to be saying that life in old age is worthless. We aren't contributing anything worthwhile, and we're just falling more and more behind the times. So we may as well step off the busy route of life and leave the space and the resources to other (younger) people.

This was not what I meant to say. So how did I manage to convey that message?

Well, here's one thing I wrote early in that blog that I realize could easily have given people that impression. "At some point," I wrote, "it’s our turn to get out of the way … as it will be everyone’s turn, with time." Oops! That sure sounds like I meant "it's time to get out of the way," since that's exactly what I said. Poor wording, poor placement. Poorly said.

Now, it's also true that elsewhere in that same blog, I wrote this: "My daily aim is to do what I can to stay engaged, to learn at least some of the skills that the new game asks of me—enough to have fun, even if I don't master it all. Enough to avoid sinking into a curmudgeonly critique of everything that represents 'kids these days'.” And in a subsequent blog, I wrote, "Delving into this book is exactly the sort of experience that keeps me surprised and delighted as life moves forward—a way of staying engaged instead of drifting." 

The problem, it seems to me, is the psychological gap between that first comment ("get out of the way") and the others ("to stay engaged, to learn..."; "surprised and delighted as life moves forward"). That gap is too easily filled by all of the stereotypes about aging that cause the first comment to stand out and the others to fade into the background. Let me explain what I mean.

I've written before about the concept of implicit attitudes—the non-conscious beliefs we all walk around with that shape our experience, even though we don't know it. We all learned negative attitudes about various groups—at least if we were conscious and paying attention. We're sponges. So we all have racist, sexist, abelist, classist, ageist ... attitudes, even when they are about groups we belong to. So, I—like everyone else—have ageist attitudes. I try to be aware of them, try to unlearn them, but they're still there. Lurking to trip me up just when I thought I was safe, like writing my own blog. I suspect it was just these non-conscious attitudes that popped out in my language "time to get out of the way"—even though I didn't mean it in the way it can so easily be taken. Other folks may have been caught by the same goblin, hearing the idea of the people mover as an invitation to check out of life. Because that interpretation is exactly what my language invited.

A listserv I belong to recently featured an article on stereotypes about aging and how those can be self-fulfilling prophecies, how they often disguise subtle forms of ageism. For instance, messages to old people to "get out of the way" and "not use up resources that are needed by younger people" actually convey troubling messages: Old people have nothing to offer, so they're "in the way." Old people do not deserve to have their own needs and dreams fulfilled, so they are "wasting resources" that should go to others.

Honestly, at a conscious, intentional level, this is not what I meant to convey. My actual meaning is clearer in the latter two quotes above—but those got lost as we all stumbled around in the implicit attitudes that my earlier language evoked. So now, let me attempt to be very clear about what I actually meant to say all along:

As I look behind me on the people mover, I see generations of people coming along who see a different world than the one I have known, the one that shaped my life. And I especially notice these differences when I encounter massive changes in how life "works"—things like the ascendancy of online education, the replacement of monthly print newsletters by regularly updated websites, and the reframing of the very meaning of "privacy"—the changes I mentioned in my troublesome blog. But I don't see these changes as bad things at all, challenging though they may sometimes be. On the contrary, I see them as the very positive, very exciting affirmation of the necessary nature of the people mover: There are generations coming along behind us who are re-shaping the world—and rightfully so! It's a good thing that the world is changing. Imagine how sad it would be if it weren't. It is their turn to define how life will look for them. And it's not our place to tell them that it's wrong.

This does not mean that we should step aside. Be silent. Be disengaged. And it does not mean that old people have nothing to add, that the best we can do is watch. In my mind, it's actually a challenge to do the opposite—to live fully, to honor the life I've experienced so far, and to continually construct a new one that draws energy from this new world. That means continuing to learn, staying engaged and forward looking, facing head on the changes that challenge me to change, too. And it means thinking about what I can bring that draws from my own experience, from the "old world" I know so well. It means being open to opportunities to be a model, a mentor, a teacher of sorts.

Margaret Mead, the brilliant cultural anthropologist who changed so much of our thinking during the 20th century, wrote about (among other things) relationships among generations. She argued that in a culture like ours where change is so rapid, the older generation can teach the younger not what they need to learn, but the importance of learning. They can show them not what to value, but the importance of having values. Not how to love, but the importance of loving. That, I think, is our enduring role as we look back from our place on the people mover.

That's a far cry from "getting out of the way" in the sense of giving up and checking out. Instead, it means "getting out of the way" in the sense of letting go of our assumption that we know what the answers are and instead enjoying the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of seeking answers, even when we haven't a clue what they will be.    

Why we need the people mover

I haven’t written for a while—too busy—so I’m hoping that grants me license for a long-ish post this time. I hope, because this qualifies as long-ish. Here's a colorful photo to entice you to read on.

I’ve written before about this idea of life as a “people mover.” We all get on at birth, and the contraption moves us inexorably forward, sprinkling us with experiences along the way, until we rotate off the end, to be replaced by the next wave of people. This seems absolutely right and appropriate, as well as inevitable. At some point, it’s our turn to get out of the way … as it will be everyone’s turn, with time.

I’ve recently had another—and different—encounter with that sense of how life moves. It’s been made up of many and diverse pieces. But they all have, to my mind, a common message: the people mover is essential for us all. 

Here’s a smattering of the experiences that got me thinking about this:

• The quarterly newsletter for the LGBTQ section of my professional association just published its last edition. Henceforth, folks will rely on the website to keep in touch with what’s happening in the organization. Certain long-standing features will be lost, and the news will no longer reach folks who don’t use the Internet. To be honest, I’m sort of sorry for the change. I like the newsletter and read it regularly. Besides, the editor is a friend who has spent a lot of time and love on this. Still, this is the direction of news media of all sorts. And the folks who are now in leadership positions come from the Internet generation … and that will remain the case in the foreseeable future. Those of us who would cling to (or cherish, pick you own word) the old format need to let go. We need to let the folks behind us take charge.
• There was a column in the New York Times this morning about the drastic changes that are occurring in higher education. (The title, “Innovation Imperative: Change Everything” sort of summarizes everything I’m trying to say here.) The emergence of MOOCs (massive online open courses) that allow anyone, anywhere to log into a college course and take it–for free!—combined with the rapid growth of online courses run by individual universities (for credit and for a fee) as regular parts of their curriculum are already changing what “education” means. Sure, you lose some things, as some of us are quick to point out—the camaraderie of fellow students, the invaluable person-to-person interactions between students and faculty, the sheer joy of out-of-class conversations that bring knowledge alive, libraries with real books, and more. But look at how many people are able to have access to education who otherwise could not. And consider the breadth of courses anyone can take—courses on any topic, taught by people from around the world, at any time of day or night. Those of us who insist that just one form of education counts as Real Education need to let go. We need to let the meaning of education grow and morph with the aims and passions of the folks behind us.
• I recently read a Time magazine column by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of the founder of Facebook. Her point is more complicated than this, but basically, she argues that her generation—i.e., the folks behind us on the people mover—has grown up with a much different understanding of privacy than that held by previous generations. Specifically, she suggests that the line between our private and our public lives has blurred in this social media-soaked generation. More than blurred; she thinks the division has basically vanished. And she’s fine with that. She argues that people will be “three-dimensional personalities whose lives, interests, hobbies, and passions are documented and on display.” Many of us who grew up in the era before such public display of our lives was so prominent may resist this shift (as I do. Certain friends continue to prod me to get on facebook). Yet, we need to realize that our vision of “privacy” is different, is passé, is (I hate to use the word about myself) old-fashioned—not a value judgment; just an observation. Personally, I still insist that sharing my personal life with friends is not the same as sharing it with thousands, and I still prefer the former. But, resist though we may, our harrumphing has had no effect in stopping this shift thus far. And it won’t. Time to get out of the way.

There have been others encounters, but I’ll stop there. In each case, I was struck with the sense that this game is passing me by, and it's right for me to let someone else play.

Now, I’m not saying that I no longer want to be engaged in “the game.” Nor am I saying that its passing me by is a bad thing. On the contrary. My daily aim is to do what I can to stay engaged, to learn at least some of the skills that the new game asks of me—enough to have fun, even if I don't master it. Enough to avoid sinking into a curmudgeonly critique of everything that represents “kids these days.” But my daily aim is also to welcome life as it is, not as I’d like to bludgeon it into being. The simple truth is that I am nearing the end of the people mover, and the folks coming along behind me don’t look, think, act, or dream in just the way I have. And they are, surely for better and for worse, the ones who get to choose the game these days. 

It’s a difference in perspective. I view these changes as a shift away from how I’ve known the world. The people behind me view them as a shift toward the world they will define and inhabit. I figure it’s their turn. Besides, in some sense, the task of absorbing change over a lifetime becomes daunting. There comes a point when I, for one, am happy to let them take my place. Some might call this giving up, giving in. I call it reality testing. Acceptance, in the Buddhist sense.   

But here is one shift that I genuinely wish I could be around for—although I am quite aware that some folks (perhaps many in my generation) have the opposite reaction to this change. It’s the demographic shift that is happening in this country, the political and psychological shifts that this change invites, and the promise of more to come.

I grew up in southeast Denver in a very white, very middle to lower-middle class neighborhood. I knew nothing about race or ethnicity (other than some blatant stereotypes that floated around my family and my social circle), was oblivious to class (ditto), and to religious diversity (ditto again)—and the same can be said for ability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, ageism, you name it. Gradually, thanks to a decent education and encounters with thoughtful and socially conscious folks, I began to get a clue about these issues—the many prejudices we/I carry, the dynamics that underlie them, and their human costs.

And now—just when I’m starting to “get it,” just when what we’re currently calling “diversity” is becoming the norm rather than the exception (“minority” will soon refer to white folks in this country)—I’m approaching the end of the ride. And behind me are all these folks I never knew, all the learning I won’t be exposed to. Now, I don’t want to sound Pollyanna about this massive social change. I am very aware that many struggles lie ahead. Many folks in this country remain wed to old notions about who is worthy and who is not. But opportunities abound for us, as individuals, to begin the process of undoing some of that, at least in ourselves.

For example, in recent weeks, I have attended the following events, each of which gave me a glimpse of a world that I don’t know well. Glimpses, it’s true. But every piece adds to the puzzle I never saw earlier in my life.

• We went to the Longmont museum to see their Day of the Dead exhibit. (Pictures of some of the altars in that exhibit are scattered through this blog.) I’ve vaguely known about this celebration (and it is a celebration) for years, but very little. This display consisted largely of alters created by local folks—individuals and groups—to honor particular individuals they knew, historical figures, the ancestors of group members, just a whole range of people. I learned about some of the traditional elements that go into an altar and the meanings they carry. Since then, this holiday has been highlighted in the New York Times and is the basis of a feature event at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Who knew …
• We saw the play “Just Like Us,” which is about a group of Latina girls, friends from childhood, who face very different options when they reach college age. Those who are not documented encounter a whole range of limitations—college admission, scholarships, jobs—and other people in their lives face even more dire consequences—deportation and likely permanent separation from their families, persistent fear of the police. I was somewhat aware of this issue because this is a topic I’ve explored some at conferences and such. But still, some of this, I never knew …
• We went to a play called “G.I.M.P. Nation,” put on by a small theater company (Phamly Theater Company) in The Laundry, a small theater in an out-of-the way corner of Denver. The actors all had a disability of some sort (visual impairment, early-onset Parkinson’s, Crohn’s disease, hearing impairment, radial club hand, and others). The play was an in-your-face challenge to temporarily able-bodied people to recognize their biases based on ability status and the human costs it exacts. Again, I have thought and learned some about this due to experiences in my own life, but this play brought new insights—e.g., how easily we patronize people with disabilities, when, that is, we’re not outright dismissing them.
• We saw the play “Book of Mormon.” My partner and I have done some research that involved becoming quite familiar with the LDS (Mormon) faith, so the content of the play was mostly familiar. What fascinated me about it was the play’s effort (successful, in my estimation) to be witty about Mormonism without its feeling hostile or denigrating. I realize that people who are themselves Mormon might feel differently. But I feel pretty protective of the LDS Church because of my close connection with it over years and my sense that the church is an easy target for derision in our culture. But despite this defensiveness, I found the play surprisingly respectful. The key message was that the packaging of beliefs is less important than the beliefs—and the core values of the LDS Church are like those of other faiths. It turns out that maybe people can be educated through comedy to recognize that. Who knew …
• And then, there was CU’s all-day symposium on LGBTQ issues, followed a week later by the annual student-led drag show. Now LGBTQ topics are an area where I feel quite in touch. It’s harder to surprise me in this domain because my partner and I think and talk about this stuff a lot, and we’re both quite involved in various aspects of the LGBTQ community. Still, several parts of the symposium were eye-opening moments for me. First, there was a panel of administrators from each of the three CU campuses, all trying to convince everyone how wonderful their work in this area is and how much more wonderful it will soon be. The surprising part of this was their very presence at the symposium and their clear determination to persuade us that they genuinely love LGBTQ folks. Imagine that happening a decade ago! The next enlightening moment was the student panel. Historically, panels of queer folks (especially youths) involve a string of people taking turns telling their coming out stories—usually focusing on how bad it was. But in this group, not one of the five panelists did a coming out story. Instead, they conveyed a great deal of comfort with their own identities—and a willingness to challenge individuals and systems that failed to honor those identities. Imagine that a decade ago! And then, a drag show that draws scores (maybe hundreds) of people to watch, a show laced with trans youth joining the LGBQ performers—all in a major university performance space and with the university’s blessing. Who’d have thought …

So, as you can no doubt tell, I’m of two minds about this whole topic of moving off the end of the people mover, about feeling like it’s time to get out of the way. I do feel that the case in many areas, and then there are the things I want to hang out for. Out of the way, of course, but still engaged.

Let me finish with this one other observation. It makes good sense that we resist our rotation off the end. It makes sense for us personally—who wants to become “irrelevant,” “old fashioned”? Who wants to disappear from the scene? (I really do get it, on a gut level. Notice the sub-title of this blog: “Resisting Gone.”). And it makes sense on a larger scale. The people behind us really do have the right/obligation to shape the world they will inhabit. And yet, there are some things that each of us won’t easily let go. For me, it’s the richness of what this society will be in a few decades.

But there’s more to this resistance. Most of us really, honestly believe that we (still!) have something important to contribute. Surely the experience of a lifetime brings some knowledge, some wisdom that could be helpful. But personally, when I invest too much certainty in the belief that I am indispensable, I try to remember that every generation has surely felt that way. Every generation has warned of the loss of their wisdom and experience … of themselves, actually. And yet, the world moves on without them. And it will without us.

This weekend, we went to piano/flute recital at an art museum in Denver. One of the pieces they played was “Oblivion” by Astor Piazolla. As they played, I closed my eyes and found myself drifting in a canoe down a wide, slow-moving river, lined here and there with dark trees shrouded in mist. Probably because of the title of the piece, my sense was that I was drifting toward oblivion. It was a peaceful feeling, and I carried it away from the recital.

I think I’ll save the image for moments when I forget that the people mover is a good thing.

  

The people mover

I’ve written here before about my image of life as a sort of people mover. Each of us has a spot in the stream of humanity, and this conveyance moves us all along from birth to death, while others move along behind us and—at least for now—in front of us.

I’ve talked about this image in terms of the “rightness” of our inevitable demise: the time comes when it’s our turn to rotate off the end of the people mover so that others can fill in the spaces where we’ve been. It also helps me to get a grip on my response to the range of folks I see in the “real world.” I’m sometimes honestly stunned and perplexed by the fact that there are people of all ages in the world—and they just keep coming, filling up places where I used to be. Newborn infants, wobbly toddlers, giggling preschoolers, and boisterous grade schoolers keep rolling into the spaces at the very back of the people mover. Ahead of them, painfully self-conscious adolescents and young adults move toward the spaces designated for adults. I see these near-adults and think (stunned again), “You’re just starting!” Between those youthful beginnings and me now stand generations of adults—some of my peers are great-grandparents, which I guess means there are at least three generations behind me, two of them adult-like.   

This vision of the human family on a people mover has its wonderful side and its troubling side, and I’ve been reminded of both in recent days. I'm most often aware of the upbeat part. Generally, I feel quite fine about this state of affairs—good even. The whole thing has a certain symmetry and some inherent fairness. And it frequently provides these moments of dazzling hope. For instance, my partner and I just returned from the annual conference of the American Psychological Association. It was in Hawaii, a beautiful corner of the Earth, which provides an opportunity to insert a few pictures to thank you for visiting my blog.

 

This conference, like most, has two appeals for me: the conference content and the chance to hang out with friends we rarely see. Both were happy reminders of the people mover.

First, the content part: At this conference, like at many recently, we encountered truly exciting work being done by folks a couple of generations back on the people mover. LGBT psychology is still wet behind its academic ears, so it's very exciting to see young folks, relatively new to this professional life, doing truly creative and sophisticated work in this area. The folks behind us in this particular lane of the people mover are stepping in, filling up the space my generation is leaving open, and doing so with grace and aplomb. I can turn around and see them there, enthusiastic, thoughtful, confident that they have something new and important to say. And they clearly do.

The social events conveyed the same message. The young people who hung around the munchies table at the social and lined up at the buffet at the group dinner, eagerly talking about research, politics, and social change between sips of wine and bites of fish tacos—these folks, too, are in our rearview mirror on the people mover. The future is coming along behind us, and it looks mighty good. 

On the other hand, the people mover sometimes troubles me with its insistent movement of some folks into and others out of the mainstream, that section of the contraption that gets all the attention, the generation that is seen, heard, and honored. Which is to say, I’m sometimes bothered by the sense that the crowd behind me is getting what seems like a disproportionately large share of the attention these days. The realization that my cohort is being displaced isn’t always a happy one.

I understand that this shift is reasonable, given that the folks behind me are now the heart of this humming, stumbling society. Clearly, part of my discomfort with this is pure narcissism: What about me? Be that as it may, I now understand the impulse of old people—an impulse I hated when I was younger—to reclaim our more visible, central, “important” years by saying things like “When I was your age …” or “I used to do that, too.” It doesn’t seem so long ago that we were in the prime years, when we were the demographic the advertisers wanted to please, we were the ones magazines and TV shows and movies coddled and portrayed, we were doing all the exciting, adventurous things. “When I was your age …”

So, this less-than-delighted perspective on the people mover was brought home for me by a recent New York Times article (which was actually a blog). This article / blog post was really good; it was about doctors’ reluctance to allow patients to die, even when they choose to end treatment, and even (this part is amazing!) when they are in hospice care. As some of you know, I’m interested in end-of-life issues, so this article caught my attention.

After I read it, I went to the blog site, called “The New Old Age,” to see what else it held. I found it to be rich in resources on aging, with lots of tools and links to organizations around the web. But what caught my attention was the paragraph introducing the blog. I quickly got that the blog is not for  aging folks. It’s about us. The intended audience is the adult children of folks who are getting old. It’s for people behind us on the people mover; it’s about people (like me and my peers) who are approaching our time to be rotating off the end. Here’s what I read:

Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before. Adults over age 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population; most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs. That burden falls to their baby boomer children. In The New Old Age, Paula Span and other contributors explore this unprecedented intergenerational challenge. 

Now, I think it’s grand that people are thinking about this stuff. If I were trying to tend to my aging (and, presumably, ailing … among the “most [who] will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs”) parents, I would be ever so happy to find this resource. I’m very clear that the pervasive fantasy that living longer inevitably means living healthily until our last day is just that: a fantasy. I understand that longer life for many will mean a period of limited ability, heightened dependence. And it’s clear that having family members and friends who can be present and supportive for that is important. So I’m not questioning the value of such information. If I were in that situation, I would likely welcome this blog—including its introductory paragraph.  

But I’m not. Tending my parents, that is. I may not even be happy about finding this blog, although I’ll need to look at it more before I decide that. I know for sure I’m not happy about the feeling evoked by that introductory paragraph, the sense of being the “other”—even being described using the dreaded word “burden.”

This is the less-than-joyful side of the people mover. Gazing in the rearview mirror can bring great joy at the swarm of good people coming along behind us. And it can bring great distress at the easy displacement we experience as the end of the ride approaches. As many have said before and better, it’s not the end that troubles me here; it’s the process of getting there. In this case, it’s the feeling this paragraph arouses of no longer mattering, except as a task for someone to undertake. It’s the slide from being the center of the herd, its beating heart, to being consigned to its edge, its “burden.”

The actual experience of those who are aging is totally lost in this paragraph, buried beneath the struggle their younger caretakers face, the "burden" they must bear. Yet aren't there two feeling people here, two inner lives. Surely there’s a way to keep both stretches of the long river of humanity in focus. Surely it’s possible for both to see themselves (and be seen by each other) as agents in their lives—rather than one being the agent of all that happens and the other the object of it all.

Perhaps it’s just that each generation sees itself as central. The NYT blogger sees her generation as the agents, her parents’ as the objects. I see it otherwise.

Seems like we should talk.