If the aim is for the top job on earth, sure, the standards are different. Optics matter. A frail 80-something in a youth-obsessed society isn’t particularly inspiring. However, seen another way, everyone alive is growing older and every stage has important lessons to impart.
Last year, an 80-year-old enthusiastically participated in the Tata Mumbai Marathon. Clad in a sari and sneakers, octogenarian Bharti Jitendra Pathak ran with the Tiranga, covering 4.2 km in 51 minutes. Pathak may be an aberration among Indian women, but Instagram is full of admirable grannies posting their videos lifting kettlebells and doing push-ups. The somewhat aggravating term, “ageing gracefully”, has evolved from meaning slinking quietly into oblivion to making the most of life by living well. It isn’t about trying to look 25 but, like that proverbial bottle of fine wine, to get better at everything as you age. How old is too old to do something? Who decides? It’s a pertinent question because the world’s focus is on the upcoming US elections, where both candidates seem ravaged by time.
If the aim is for the top job on earth, sure, the standards are different. Optics matter. A frail 80-something in a youth-obsessed society isn’t particularly inspiring. However, seen another way, everyone alive is growing older and every stage has important lessons to impart. When you’re a child, each year that passes feels exciting because of the looming prospect of adulthood, which, for dreamy young minds, translates to romantic visions of independence and freedom. Alas, it’s another matter altogether that reaching middle age evokes severe nostalgia for childhood, which one realises in retrospect is the only time one is actually free. Having said that, from the point of view of the slightly less agonising 40s, youth is overrated. Parents rule, you have no agency. For many the teen years are ridden with panicky insecurities, perhaps a necessary rite of passage to figuring out one’s path ahead. The 20s are generally about work-hard, play-hard and fly-by in a whirl of activity. By one’s late 30s, some measure of inner confidence sets in; whatever the journey, one philosophically accepts, life goes on.
So, reading all the scathing pieces about US President Joe Biden stubbornly digging his heels in, his state of mind seems perfectly clear — he’s mining the greatest benefit of old age, that you simply don’t care about what other people think you should do. So much of our lives are spent wrapped up in responsibilities and in meeting the expectations of others. If there’s one thing to recommend old age, it’s this — that all forms of validation cease to matter. For women, reaching this headspace is especially liberating because the dominant discourse is that our value declines as we age. We’re inundated with images of perfectly crafted and remade bodies, so much so it’s often difficult to tell what anyone of any age is supposed to look like any more. It’s a binary choice, hanging on to youthfulness by the many surgical means possible (and, thereby, risking being a joke) or being written off for not caring enough to do anything about gravitational forces.
On the Who What Wear podcast that decodes fashion and style, the svelte and shapely 50-year-old influencer Gabrielle Union-Wade talked about the unsavoury comments she received for posting photos of herself in a bikini. It doesn’t cost to have an opinion, so there’s no dearth of people sermonising arbitrarily on the alleged age cut-off for a certain kind of swimsuit and mini skirt. Union-Wade’s tart response was that she might just don a bikini in her coffin. Dealing with spite, too, gets easier with age. The understanding deepens that we’re here to enjoy ourselves not pander to becoming what the culture says we should be. It’s easier to develop a long view of events. Finally, you can pursue interests without thinking about competition and the pressure of needing to excel, that plagues our youth. Life isn’t over till it’s over, and it’s long, with many opportunities for do-overs.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 14-07-2024 at 07:15 IST
