Rant of a silver hair ageist

Read about this "Silver Co-op", a social entreprise, that organizes group vacations for people over 40 with itineraries that cater to the needs of silver hair citizens including visiting places less energy demanding, providing food less oily and salty and including more TOILET BRAKES (which incidentally my husband would appreciate :) )

Honestly I am not sure whether I would like to travel with them. Though I am not athletic by nature I would really prefer to travel with a younger group and see whether I can stretch myself further. I recall myself and my husband joining a middle aged Australian hiker-couple going on a highland trek at Lombok. Though my feet went shaky at the relatively rough terrain and was fearful of slipping and falling, I had no choice but to keep up with the group, with my husband literally pulling me up at times.Oh Boy what I would have missed if I had chickened out.

There is another aspect one has to tolerate when moving with an elderly group. The common one-mindedness trait can be a test on one's patience. Gosh don't I sound like one silver haired ageist bitch!

I have many such encounters when talking to supposedly more enlightened elderly investors at company AGMs during receptions. One particular old man grilled me as to why I queried the company on its zero gearing during question time. "Why do you want the company to be in debt?" he charged whilst I tried to explain to him the concept of optimal WACC (weighted average cost of capital). I patiently tried to parallel it with an example of how we geared up for personal investment in property, but he was too fixed in the mind about the risk/evil of being in debt to really take in anything I said. I gave up and terminated our conversation with a sigh and "never mind".

Reading about this co-operative got me into thinking what we the silver-hair people really need. We need some patient and sacrificial young volunteers to organize discussion groups amongst elderly people banded by age and education. The golden rule to abide at such discussion sessions is to have an open mind. So let's say with a ratio of 10 seniors to 2 or 3 youngsters, a topic can be put forward for discussion or an article to be read before hand. But mind you I am not referring to feed back groups on government policies organised by government (yawn). I am referring to random topics which can be something in the news or certain social behaviour or even out of nowhere topics like how much sleep do we need?", topics along the lines of questions posted in Quora perhap.

I myself am fortunate or unfortunate enough  to have children who often unceremoniously remind me of my narrow outlook and out-datedness in knowledge. So I receive regular links to read or ignore (irrespective) in their attempt to keep me abreast of how the young think and do.  I can't say I am pleased to be told such but if I swallow my pride and explore more it does change my outlook. I also must say sometimes I choose to ignore and tell myself it is too exhausting to make sense of this fast changing world, "who cares" and "so be it" and "I like being the sleepy frog in the well".

However if we do take some time to reflect upon our own experiences, how we were often proven wrong from initial impressions or fixed ideas or stubborn blindness, we may start taking small steps to open up.

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” -Isaac Asimov


Next time I will say to some old man "give your mind a scrub"and if he retorts with remarks that imply “我吃的盐比你吃的米多” I will sigh and say "never mind" and scrub mine instead.