What MAY be: Reframing Aging

As a photographer, I know that a single scene can be shot in a variety of ways—even if you’re standing at the exact same vantage point. One person might aim the camera at the broken sidewalk and weeds below, while another at the unbelievable sunset to the west.

It’s the same with aging. Unfortunately, it seems so many—at least in this culture--see just the broken parts of it. This month, we’re going to look at the opportunities. Skeptical that a 51-year-old is trying to force a Pollyanna filter on the subject? I hope you’ll at least take a look at some of the interesting research and stories I will share. (I need to credit neighbor Martha Bader, who is also obsessed with re-framing aging, who helped brainstorm the article ideas for this month.)

In the United States, we’ve gotten into a terribly damaging habit of thinking about aging only in terms of loss and fear.

We say things like,

"I can’t do that because I’m too old."

"My husband just died and it’s going to be all downhill from here."

"I don’t want to move closer to my kids because I don’t want to be a burden."

Fear, as I know from vast personal experience which I won’t go into here, is the death knell of happiness. In fact, it can undermine just about every positive emotion or inclination you might be wired to have. So this month, I’m going to try to counter some of the most common fears that come up around getting old with information, inspiring stories, research and a little humor.

What I ask of you, my dear readers, is an open mind. “Beginner’s mind,” as they say in Zen.

The way we humans have done aging for centuries—by living in multigenerational families and communities in relationships which have been mutually beneficial over a lifetime until we pass away, often at home—is not the way we are doing it now. And the way many of us are doing it now is not working. What adjustments can we make to do it better in this new world, without bankrupting our families and creating needless suffering along the way?

From 1997 until 2002, I worked in a scrappy start-up in a warehouse in the Mission District in San Francisco. I was the first employee in a company that quickly grew to over one hundred graphic designers and programmers, animators and writers, working for clients like Apple, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Library of Congress. With almost every project we walked into, we had never done something like it before. We had to become optimistic, on-the-fly problem solvers. And it is with this mindset that I want to kick off the month of MAY and what MAY be.

What, in the sea of things we aren't doing well, are we doing really well? And what can we learn from that?