The Senior Effect

America is getting older. There, I said it people! Statistics can be manipulated, but they do not lie.

In many cultures, you gain respect and stature as you age. Younger people in these communities are taught to recognize all of the wisdom and guidance older people can provide from their years of life experience. As the old saying goes, “Good judgment is generally the result of experience…and experience is generally the result of bad judgment.” Or, as my mother used to tell my siblings and me when trying to explain why she knew better than we did, “I’ve been both young and old and you haven’t.”

Why is it in this country society seems to look down on the elderly? It’s like their usefulness is over just because they can’t walk as fast as they used to or hear as well as they once could. My mother told me recently that she met with a lifelong friend of hers who had always been a very attractive lady. She was surprised to realize that her friend was 81 years old. My mother told her she didn’t look 81, and the friend said she had gotten some plastic surgery on her face. My mother asked her why and she responded that she was tired of people treating her like she was old when she didn’t feel old and was still leading an active and productive life. My mother was not surprised because she has experienced these feelings as well.

Here’s a newsflash: there are a whole lot of “old” people out there who don’t feel like they are old. Harlan Coben put it incredibly well when he wrote about going to his high school reunion: “I’m 48 years old, not a kid anymore by any definition,” he wrote, “but here is a universal truth that every adult at some point will realize: We are all always 17 years old, waiting for our lives to begin.”[1]

With all these aging people in the population, the government and businesses are trying to handle having older people in the workforce. Some companies are responding by getting rid of their workers once they reach a certain age. I don’t agree with this policy. I would suggest that these companies study all the good these people can provide to the organization and try to find more ways to include them than exclude them.

I personally know men and women in their 80s who I seek advice from on a regular basis, and I feel like I benefit greatly from having them as a resource. These seniors are very generous in sharing their wealth of knowledge because they aren’t competing with and don’t feel threatened by me. Others have also told me about how they benefitted from getting advice from older people. My uncle Jack, a frequent star of my blog, is a great example. Not only has he given me great advice, he has also advised countless other young men and women both in and out of commercial real estate. Marvin Lang is another individual who has advised me and others. One of my readers wrote to me one week after I mentioned Marvin in my Words of Encouragement and told me that Marvin had given him advice when he was thinking about starting his own business. That advice was invaluable to him, and he went on to develop a very successful company.

And yet in modern America, there is a stigma about being a “senior citizen.” I read recently that 95% of American women whose hair has gone gray or white dye their hair, compared to 5% who dyed it 20 years ago. There is a ton of pressure on men and women alike to look younger for fear of being labeled a “senior.”

Are we now going to judge others and be judged not by the quality of our work or the depth of our knowledge and experience but by the quality of our hairdressers?

Have a great weekend,

Ro