My grandmother used to say she never felt any older than eighteen.
I’ve heard many variations on this sentiment, but only decades after I connected the thought with her. She died when I was six-years-old, it was the first big loss in my life, and it made me realize what she had meant. It frightened me because I knew I would feel the same someday.
I try to treat children as equals because I remember just how deeply I already understood the world when I was their age. I try to treat the aging as peers too because I remember what my grandmother said.
When my grandfather died two whole decades after her, it was two years after he’d been given two weeks to live. Those last two good years were a surprise, and he and I became closer in that short time.
I also took my one and only solo backpacking trip across Europe two months before he died and I recall thinking at his funeral how I had gotten to know a little of the eighteen-year-old in the ninety-year-old body in those 24 months. I wished I could have crossed Europe with the teenager in him.
My second continuing ed session of The Interactive Voice with mostly retirees is going as good as the first did. I find the students no different than my younger and middle-aged graduate students. They don’t want publicity, or vague instruction, or to write either, until I convince them they want all three. Two of them confessed they loathed writing before class and now write daily.
Both sessions at Dartmouth’s Osher Program have been wonderfully diverse. There was a historical novelist in the first session and a textbook writer in the second. There was a nature writer, an investigative journalist, and a genealogical poet last time. There’s a physical therapist, massage therapist, yoga therapist, and an ecumenical preacher poet this time.
One gentleman wanted to return to New York City’s modern art gallery scene to show his figurative paintings—and he succeeded. Another gentleman is valiantly advocating for Parkinson’s patients while valiantly fighting the disease himself.
They all have projects to accomplish and all will benefit from greater online skills, greater media skills, and most importantly, greater creative skills.
The first time I wondered why technology discriminates against older generations was when my parents began to age around fifteen years ago. My father needed software to accommodate his deteriorating senses and counter his threatened pride too. I don’t think that’s a tall order for software.
While iPads are easy for toddlers to decipher, the simplest operating system is not intuitive for people losing their sight and used to instructions. The overwhelming variety of starting points on desktops, smartphones, browsers, and apps paralyzes anyone over a certain age.
I’m surprised this wasn’t taken into consideration during these past two-and-a-half decades of online and operating system innovation. The aging population is a large market, only destined to grow larger before everyone is connected.
The Web and its constant inquiry have made expertise less expert, but that’s true for everyone. When it comes to creative experimentation, all of my students are learning to swim. Everyone has equal access, if we give them the tools to get started.
Avatars bring out the eighteen-year-old in all of us.