Life As Performance Art 165

I think I have reached the age of irrelevance. It used to be that you cannot trust anyone over thirty. It is popularly assumed John Lennon might have said it, but it has also been attributed to radical sixties activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Now John Lennon was forty when he died, ten years older than thirty. Abbie Hoffman died when he was fifty-two, or twenty-two years past his shelf life and Jerry Rubin would have been fifty-six when he went to meet his Maker, twenty-four years past his best before date. Jack Weinberg, an American environmental activist, is said to have coined the expression. He was twenty-four at the time and said it in 1964. He is still alive. Next year he will be eighty. Uh-huh. Now that forty is the new thirty, one would imagine that the goalposts have been moved. And thirty is the new twenty, making twenty...the new twelve? Given how cosseted, coddled and overprotected middle class kiddies are nowadays, factored in of course with extended lifespans and better health outcomes, well, but of course, Gentle Reader! Daycare and play school now extend into the teenage years, and don't always end there. So I am approaching my mid-sixties, and I feel now that my age of irrelevance has only just begun. It is actually frustrating hearing about the new trends in thinking, and realizing that it isn't that they confuse me, nor that I necessarily disagree with them. Rather, being of a certain age, and wisdom and intelligence, I have decades of experience over the younger folk, and also a capacity for nuance that simply leaves the brightest of them baffled and confused. There are a lot of older people like me, by the way. Let's begin with smartphones. I have had cell phones, now I can't afford one, given my low income and my need to make tradeoffs and sacrifices if I want to honour my love of travel every year. This is a way of thinking, by the way, that is totally strange to younger people who cannot imagine spending even five minutes estranged from their precious little tech toys. (Pathetic!) Naturally, I make a virtue out of necessity, quite enjoy being out and about without being encumbered or annoyed by electronic distractions, and I also get to feel all superior to the rest of you. Yet, I also completely enjoy the blessings of computer technology. I have a friend in Colombia and we regularly visit each other on Skype for language exchange, which is just like having a visit over coffee twice a week with a cool buddy. I can search Google images for ideas for making art, including every tropical bird on the planet. I can find great documentaries in Spanish on Youtube for language practice, entertainment and education (but no porn, which is boring, and I do have standards after all and I even maintain those standards in the privacy of my home!) And of course I can write this blog and put it out there for whomever is willing to read it, for their entertainment, diversion, and annoyance. I control technology. Technology does not, and never is going to control me. But that is part of getting older. We acquire wisdom, knowledge, perspective, and, yes, strength, simply for having endured and survived for a few extra years. Younger people are for the most part too hobbled by their own fear of decline and death in order to even consider who we are or what we have to offer as having value. And that is their loss. No one ever really prepared me for my sixties, not that it would be such an awful time in my life. Anything but! This has actually proven, so far, to be my best years ever. And I am not afraid to die, knowing and feeling totally safe and assured, after surviving so many other people's deaths, not to mention threats on my own life, that that is in God's hands (a very unpopular belief, I am sure, but too bad for you. Your loss, not mine!). Now, if only I could get some of you to forget that I'm older, at least long enough to actually pay attention to what I have to tell you! Hello? ¿Hola?