Seniors: Considerations

Robin Chat

Admin · 36 mins

Something to consider...
There are a variety of discussions and tweets online about seniors and Covid-19. Some of them, too many, expose what one tweet describes as "our built-in callousness toward the elderly". While some groups are forming to offer those who are in self-isolation the support they may need, others are discussing how it may save money and resources if nature were allowed to take its course. Some are joking. Some are dismissive.

How is it that on one hand, we know that many people work until 65, some work beyond, and are deemed active, experienced, knowledgeable and a resource, and then, a short five years later are deemed expendable? Has the fact that governments are asking seniors to consider working past 65 because they are needed in some jobs ever entered the minds of some?

How does a person adjust to the fact that one day, at 64 years and 364 days they are an asset, and one day later they are not? Add five more years, and some are still in the workforce, most not, but most still active, vital, engaged in their communities, fully in control of their faculties, and with a world of experience to share, but are suddenly deemed somehow not of worth? They spend, they pay taxes, they travel, they visit, they offer endless hours of voluntary work, they are fully functioning persons who worked, and suddenly, are not worthy? How is this possible? Some may have health issues. Many will not, or their issues are fully controllable. They may have another ten, fifteen or twenty years, some more, to live life as fully as they want, or can.

Society has shifted to a youth focus. Attitudes change due in large part to marketing, and advertising pushing a variety of biases. To become dismissive of an entire generation and more, because of life taking its normal course, well that deserves some thought and societal self-reflection.

How does one move from seeing someone as fully human and functioning, a contributing member of society, to being something other, and disposable? They aren't different because their days of being in the workforce are over. They aren't a burden. They are a source of knowledge, and strength brought to them by their years of life. Just as one would hope that all lives are valuable, cared about, one could hope that the collective callousness is a passing faux-pas, a slip, a lapse of thought and judgement, to be dismissed from acceptable social behaviour. People are more than workers. Has that lesson been lost?