A Letter to A CBC Radio Host

First of all I really hope you don't mind that I am writing to you on my blog.  I am a regular listener and I often wonder if there might be others as well as myself from out in Vacuum Land who would like to mention these or similar things to you.

I enjoy your program, the positive tone and all the inspiration towards living creatively and enjoyably and of course you sound like a lovely and very warm person.  I am sure that you are well enjoyed every morning Saturdays and Sundays and that many of your listeners would love to have coffee or brunch or cocktails with you sometime.

I have only one slight misgiving.  I almost always feel left out when I listen to you and your many guests.  You see, I'm a bit of a teetotaler and tend to live modestly so I am not really that interested in craft beer or fine wines.  I am an artist.  Here is a page of some of my acrylic paintings if you care to have a peek: http://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.ca/2014/11/paintings.html and often enjoy your conversations with artists.  I am also poor, earn only a little more than minimum wage and live in social housing.  In other words I am probably not a member of your target audience.

I think I could best say some things about your program this and last weekend in order to illustrate my concern.  This morning, Saturday, you were broadcasting an interview with ninety-five year old lawyer Constance Isherwood who is still working.  It was interesting and inspiring of course, but given that this has often been the tone of your program about aging, it also raises some issues for me.  Namely, what about those of us who do not age well?  There appears to be a growing expectation that as we age we are going to have to do it in such a way that we remain active, working and as fully involved in life as we were in our twenties and if we have not succeeded in this, if we somehow become sick and frail, socially isolated and abandoned by our families and a financial burden to the health care system then it must be our own fault.

We didn't eat right, or exercise enough.  We smoked.  We drank too much.  Or we had the misfortune of being stranded living in a polluted community making us more vulnerable to cancer and heart disease.  Or we failed in the gene pool competition.  Or we grew up in dysfunctional and abusive households, became traumatized, unable to secure a decent education and lived our entire lives in working poverty, were abandoned by our loved ones and became vulnerable by default to all the diseases of old age, became a burden on the health care system, and died before we were ninety.

This is for me especially poignant.  Because I have many years experience working with and caring for the elderly (though I currently work in mental health support).  Because I have also had experience in palliative care and am not a stranger to death and dying.  And because I am myself no longer young.

In fact, just this month, I was hospitalized for the first time in my adult life.  I suffered from a kind of multiple systems breakdown, am now doing well in recovery and receiving excellent follow up medical care.  However, I am almost sixty, so it should be no wonder that I am appreciating this recent hospitalization and health challenge as a kind of initiation into Geezer hood.

I would be the last one to deny that I am aging.  Already younger people have been giving up their seat on the bus for me for the last five years or so (yes, that's right, a lot of younger people in Vancouver actually do offer their transit seats to the elderly.)  I graciously accept, given that I think it is great to encourage good habits in the young.  It is also a matter of common courtesy since it is just as much a kindness to accept a kindness as it is to offer a kindness.  Curiously, I know a fellow the same age as me who admits to feeling insulted whenever a younger person offers him their bus seat.  My reply?  How pathetic!

This is not to say that I do not believe in aging well or in accepting one's responsibility for their health and wellbeing.  What I am saying is that to everything there is a limit.  We are not going to live forever.  None of us.  And I cannot help but see in this whole competitive business of becoming a super senior and be still running marathons at age one hundred and ten as a kind of collective denial and, yes, a fear of the inevitable.

Our bodies all slow down and deteriorate as we age.  Eventually we all die.  Some of us take longer than others.  I have a friend in Colombia who lives in Bogota, age sixty-seven.  At the incredibly high altitude there he gleefully can run up a flight of stairs as though he were a teenager.  There is no way I could keep up with him especially at 8500 feet above sea level, and especially given that I am used to the oxygen dense climes of sea level Vancouver.  Am I envious?  Not really but I do admire my friend Jorge.

Aging well is every bit about acceptance as it is about taking good care of ourselves.  Since this recent hospitalization I am reminded more concretely than ever that I have a shelf life and my time on this earth is limited.  I am not going to observe this fact by training for marathons or dancing the night away when I am eighty.  I am however going to seize, treasure and cherish each and every moment that remains for me.  I am also going to continue to be as kind and generous, loving and considerate of others as I can.  I want every footprint that I leave behind to be a footprint of inspiration to those who come after me, which is to say not to try to beat the odds and live like you are still under forty but to strive one's utmost to be a better and more compassionate human being.

Suggestions?  Perhaps try to include those of us in your programming who do not fit the well-heeled middle and upper middle class demographic that your program represents.  A lot of us struggle to get by and many of us also are CBC listeners.  Please don't leave us out.

In your desire to sound positive, please also remember that rodeos (as you were talking about the Cloverdale Rodeo last weekend) are disgraceful forums for animal cruelty.  You also mentioned golf.  Maybe also put in a mention that golf courses waste millions of litres of drinking water?

But especially, please remember those of us who are less fortunate than you.  But not as objects of pity.  Get to know some of us.  Maybe interview us on your program and see for yourself and share with your more fortunate listeners about our struggles and many triumphs as we also seek to live with dignity in a society that has very little time for us.