Doing things a bit late(r) in life
No-one ever thinks I am the age on my birth certificate. Wonderful you say, she’s found the fount of eternal youth. Hardly. Sometimes it’s useful. Sometimes these remarks tell me more about the assumptions of others.
North America and Europe are generally both very ageist societies. The media reinforce this, always reporting someone’s age as if this will help us understand their motivation, their story or their choices in life. In terms of achievements, if one does not achieve milestones by a certain age, one is deemed strange, a misfit, or at worst, a failure. Middle-class bourgeois values dominate these media-induced narratives. But while non-conformists, late-bloomers, and age-defying individuals are occasionally celebrated, for the most part the pressure to marry, to have children, to achieve stability in work, to contribute to a pension, to buy property by a certain stage in life are all assumptions built in to so many structures of life in the West.
In my internal conversation with myself I go back and forwards as to the validity of these assumptions and how they play out in society. One of the great markers of youth and/or age is the age of child bearing and/or rearing. We are always judgmental that one individual did this too young, another too late in life.
