Elders Are Not Inflexible; They're Discriminating

Over the past few years I’ve written a lot about discrimination against elders. One of the persistent myths of aging I try to dispel is that old people become stuck in their ways, unwilling or unable to change.

This myth is so deeply entrenched in the culture that employers who discriminate against older workers frequently draq it out as an excuse for choosing youth over experience in hiring.

But it’s just not so. Here are a couple of examples of how such myths turn up in everyday life:

The kid at the store where I regularly purchased my coffee in New York City tried one day to get me to buy a new blend that was on sale. At one point in the discussion, he said, "oh, try something new for a change." I did not.

As much as he was knowledgeable about coffee, what the 20-something kid did not consider and can’t possibly understand yet is that in 50-odd years of drinking coffee, I've tried dozens of blends. I’ve even invented a few. And it took 20 years of a lot of bad coffee to find what I like, so I’m sticking with it.

I’m not being inflexible; I’m being discriminating. I have better things to do with the time I have left on earth than fix something that isn’t broken.

A friend who is closer to my age than the coffee store kid, tried once to convince me to stay at a party after 10:30PM, because he thought I'd be missing out on a lot of fun by leaving.

I wake early and those quiet morning hours (with my perfectly blended coffee, of course) before the world gets moving are precious to me. No phone calls, few emails, no horns blaring in the street – just the birds, the cat and me. It is one of the great, small pleasures in my life and sets the tone for my day.

Besides, I learned long ago that nothing much happens past 10:30 or 11PM at a party other than people - even those I am fond of and me too - get drunker and dumber.

As elders, we have had decades of making poor choices to arrive at what are the best and most satisfying for us. New is not always better and if it is, older folks have had more years than younger ones yet have to make that judgment.

We change when necessary and useful, witness the thousands of elderbloggers, many of whom retired from the workplace before computers entered their businesses and therefore, they had to first teach themselves computers before blogging. It is another myth that elders cannot keep up with technology, but that's a story for another day.

Our consumer economy exhorts us to buy, buy, buy. The most effective sales word marketers can put on a package is “new,” and it is the young who are most frequently sucked in by this usually more expensive and sometimes inferior version. If it’s new, they buy it. Elders know to look behind the glitz and glitter of the advertising for quality and need.

In decisions large and small, old people make fewer mistakes. We do change – after we have weighed the issue and come to a conclusion based on knowledge and experience - and it is a mild form of ageism to believe otherwise of elders.

In thinking this over now, it appears to me that it may be the younger ones who are inflexible stick-in-the-muds, willing to spend time and money chasing after the momentarily trendy. But give them time; they will learn to be discriminating too - the hard way, just as elders have.