Even though we all know that old age is inescapable yet we refuse to accept it. We do not want to think of it. We try to forget it or ignore it. We resort to cliches and illusions to escape it. Our industrial age has created and promoted a youth culture that denies old age. In olden times, life was divided into four stages—childhood, youth, middle age, and old age; but our modern culture has downsized the categories to three—childhood, youth, and 'you are looking fine.' Coffeehouses put up signs saying, 'Don't blame our coffee. You too will one day be old and moldy.' Psychologists teach us to deny old age, saying: 'Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it does not matter.' Old people never call themselves old. A person who is 80 years old says 'I am 80 years young.'
Expressing disgust and dislike of old age, talk-show hosts have coined phrases, such as the 'Four Bs of old age: bunions, bulges, bifocals, and baldness.' Promoters of youth culture have invented terms like senior citizen and citizen of longer living to identify the old. For them, an old person is not old but biologically challenged; and a dead person is never dead but metabolically challenged. Yet old age refuses to reverse its course. Saying that 'old age is gracious,' or 'it is the greatest time to be old,' or 'old age is the best time of life—the golden years' does not make old age
different.
articlesource:living.oneindia.in
