Ageism: who needs us after fifty?

The cashier asks the customer for a social card – and she runs home to look in the mirror: do I really look so bad that they took me for a pensioner? A 40-year-old lady seriously says to her friend: “Well, what hobbies are there at our age!” – and that one’s heart shrinks from vague anxiety. A colleague draws up an “old age” pension and jokes, but it is noticeable that she is not actually having fun. A 60-year-old friend says: “It would be nice to meet more often! After all, our time is running out … “

Small and seemingly insignificant, such episodes remain in the memory like splinters that cannot be pulled out in any way. We are trying to look at things objectively: in fact, where am I and where is old age?

Both at 50 and at 60 we have a lot of energy, the head works, the memory does not fail. But at the same time, anxiety arises about what may lie ahead: withering, illness, helplessness, loss of the meaning of life. The question is, what do we do with this anxiety: ignore, resign, get angry at ourselves and others? Let’s try to look him in the face.

delayed old age

“No, life is not over at 31,” Prince Andrei Bolkonsky reflects on Tolstoy. In The Nest of Nobles, Turgenev describes a 45-year-old wrinkled old woman with a toothless mouth. We recall many such examples from the classics. In this sense, times have changed dramatically. At what age do we now think about the fact that life – that is, an active, full life – is over?

The average life expectancy in the world is constantly growing. Medicine does not stand still, scientific and technological progress makes working conditions and our existence in general more comfortable, the level of education is increasing – all these factors push back the onset of old age. The paradox is that our consciousness, both social and individual, does not seem to keep up with progress.

In the West, everyone is already accustomed to the emergence of the “third age” – a period of active life after 60-65 years (retirement age in Western countries comes later than in Russia). It precedes the “fourth age”, that is, old age itself with all its attributes. Researchers proceed from the fact that real old age today does not occur before 75 years. In other words, a new attitude towards older people and a new culture of aging is emerging in the Western world.

“It began to take shape when the generation of baby boomers born after the war began to enter retirement age,” explains sociologist Anna Shadrina. “For the most part, this is a very prosperous generation: many have earned good pensions and own real estate.” They are free from material worries and can afford to live a full life: travel, get a new education, keep fit, enjoy all the benefits of civilization.

Destined to be a grandmother

In Russia, the picture is different, continues Anna Shadrina. Studying the features of everyday life and the way of thinking of older Russian women, she came to the conclusion that “the standards of life of Western women of age are far from our reality. It is one thing to be a prosperous pensioner in a developed country, and another thing for a woman who was born in the Soviet Union, at the age of about forty went through a difficult period of the 90s, not always being able to fit into the new market system, and now receives a pension in the amount of a living wage. .

What does society offer a Russian woman after 55? Well-deserved rest and the role of a grandmother.

“Of course, a pension of 55 was invented in Soviet times, when life expectancy was shorter,” continues Anna Shadrina. “The state is investing less and less in helping families with children, it is interested in the institution of grandmothers being active.”

On the one hand, Russian women were emancipated earlier than Western women, since after the 1917 revolution they began to work. But at the same time, the sociologist notes, in Russia the existence of a woman is closely connected with motherhood. “A woman is still not thought of as a non-mother. And the women who participated in my study have a linear life trajectory: study – early marriage – early motherhood – early retirement – full-time work as a grandmother.

Moreover, women who, for one reason or another, do not have grandchildren, experience a sense of guilt, as if they are not coping with the life task set before them. “Because there are no other role models for a 60-year-old woman,” sums up Anna Shadrina.

Why are we “going out”?

The feelings of a person of pre-retirement age are reminiscent of the feelings of a child who played with might and main in a good company, and at that moment parents suddenly come and say to him: “That’s it, the time is up, finish it, it’s time to go home!” We are also ready to exclaim like a child: “How, already?”

Yes, we all know about our wrinkles, gray hair, changed figure – but we can still “play” with might and main! Why take us away from the circle of “playing”, socially active? Who are these “parents” who tell us “It’s time” and why do we obey them or even agree with them?

There are many of these voices. First of all, the state hints at this: it pays pensions on which it is impossible to live with dignity, and often it is difficult to simply survive.

“A person who is assigned a modest pension, sometimes barely reaching the subsistence level, receives a signal that he is not needed,” says psychotherapist and geriatrician Grigory Gorshunin. These are employers who reject even 40-year-olds – let alone people over 50. This is the immediate environment: friends, peers, relatives. Why do we listen to them and not ourselves?

“Many strive to be built into a semantic structure that was not created by us, endow it with legitimacy and orient themselves to it. Those who are able to rely on themselves, manage their lives on their own, and not follow others, are much less in the older generations, ”explains the psychotherapist.

And sometimes it is literally the voices of our parents or grandparents. In childhood and youth, we observed their aging. Someone was lucky to be a witness to how parents worked enthusiastically all their lives, without even thinking about retirement. But others saw that the elders were impatiently waiting for a well-deserved rest, and having gone out on it, they quickly became decrepit.

These patterns of aging also affect us. “I often tell my patients: remember, you set an example for your children and grandchildren, how to deal with your old age,” says Grigory Gorshunin. Even if it seems to you that they are not looking at you, they look anyway. We educate not so much with words as with our example.”

inner youth

You don’t have to be particularly observant to notice how sharply different peers at the age of just over 50 differ from each other. Later, this gap becomes even more noticeable.

Determining the chronological boundaries of old age and old age is very difficult, says developmental psychologist Marina Ermolaeva, author of the book Practical Psychology of Old Age. There is biological, social and psychological aging. It is the psychological factor that plays the leading role – humility with aging and a decrease in intellectual activity.

“An actively working person does not become old even at the age of 80 – he remains at the age of maturity,” says Marina Ermolaeva. After all, in fact, there are no objective reasons to consider yourself worthless at this age. The numbers 55 or 60 are an absolute convention. In Britain, for example, people retire at 65 – and the British consider this age to be the watershed between maturity and old age.

“Perhaps the very fatigue from the work of a person of retirement age is a constructed category,” Anna Shadrina reflects. – It is not known whether we will feel tired if we do not have the opportunity to retire. It cannot be ruled out that in the future people from Western countries will have to work for the rest of their lives. I live in England, I’m 41 years old, and it looks like my generation will be the first to experience this first hand.”

Do not deny yourself anything

In maturity, conservatism turns into inertia, emphasizes Marina Ermolaeva. I don’t want to change anything, there is no need to set goals, because it will take effort to achieve them. The creative impulse is fading. “The head is not the same as before,” our friends say all the time.

Natalia is 73 years old. PhD, a former economist, by the will of fate ended up in Spain, she rents a room on her small pension and lives very modestly.

I took free Spanish courses for two years and now I’ve decided to retake the high school program. In addition, she graduated from computer design courses and enthusiastically makes videos, plans to make a cartoon and has already found a director for this project. On Facebook, in the “About Me” section, she writes: “Everything around is changing – I am changing too. Don’t want to get out of your comfort zone? I am inviting you!”

Can a pensioner travel with our pensions? It turns out it can. Vladimir is 61 years old, he has a higher education, but now, due to circumstances, he works as a janitor. He always dreamed of seeing the world. A few years ago, he saved money and went on a tour of Europe, was delighted and has been traveling every year since then. He jokes that it has become a habit with him.

“What are the novels after 60?” is another common opinion. Inna is 68, she is in love and just got married. “I wouldn’t look for someone specifically,” she says. “Another thing is that internally I allowed myself to do this.”

Find your business

If we dream of finishing work in order to finally rest, to live for our own pleasure, without straining, then we drive ourselves into a trap. Humanistic psychologist Viktor Frankl believed that such a “rest” is fraught with a spiritual crisis, because we realize that our life is not meaningful enough: “When every day of the week turns into Sunday, a feeling of existential vacuum suddenly makes itself felt.”

Therefore, if you have a job that you like, it is better not to leave it as long as possible, Marina Ermolaeva is sure.

And if this is not possible, you need to find yourself a new business. It is a business, not a hobby, she emphasizes. The one that we perceive as needed by someone other than us, which we can consider as a full-fledged work. “And it’s best to find it long before you retire – that’s the prevention of aging.”

We delay aging if we continue to develop and learn. Anthropologist Margaret Mead noted that the extraordinary speed of social change in the XNUMXth century led to the emergence of a new culture (she called it post-figurative), when cultural experience is transmitted from the younger generation to the older. And this means that we must be ready to learn from those who are younger, and even much younger.

The desire to change, openness to new things, the ability to see opportunities instead of setting artificial restrictions are the necessary components of a full-fledged, active second half of life. As, however, and the first.