It's May!

I'm turning 31 this month, having spent a decadal year locked up in my house, and today I poured too much cold brew.

So TODAY ON TWITTER we are going to talk about all this jibber jabber about "getting old" and how I think it's basically bullshit.

1/
"Chelsea, getting older is a scientific fact, and over time bodies—"

Do I look like I was born yesterday? I know time is a thing. I know bodies are a thing. You're not delivering headline news here.

No, what I mean is, these ideas about who you are as you get older.

2/
Around my late 20s, I had enough friends old enough to be regularly hearing things like "Oooh, I'm so old, I got excited about new sheets!"

Everyone likes new sheets. When I was 9 I got excited about a new comforter because I got to get a grown up pattern and not Elmo.

3/
These are not thoughts and feelings that are actually associated with being old.

They're perfectly normal thoughts and feelings at any age that we have arbitrarily associated with being old.

So far pretty silly, but what's the harm?

4/
Well, here's the harm.

First, we associate the enjoyment of arbitrary normal quotidian experiences with "getting old"

And then somehow we leap from there to “being old is tantamount to a personality trait associated with being boring and quotidian”

5/
Like, first of all

Why are we disincentivizing people enjoying the mundane moments of their lives? We live in a late stage capitalist hellscape, let people enjoy their sheets
I think this has something to do with why so many young people identify as "old souls"

They're not wizened priestesses in young, hot bodies. They're 19 year olds who waltz out in front of moving traffic in campus towns.

But they associate their thoughts with being old...
...because we reinforce this arbitrary idea about what it means to get old.

SO THE SECOND THING IS
How, the HELL, did we associate age with being boring?

Have we MET old ladies?

Who made clubs to go shopping in purple coats & red hats? Who taught Cardi B to wear her hands like that? Who tell stories about abusive men they may or may not have murdered like it's the weather?
My late grandmother wore bright red lipstick and like nine rings and would bust out singing Jewish songs, hand to G-d, in the middle of Publix.

One time after my grandpa's funeral she dragged all four of her young, athletic grandchildren across a deli to meet a baby. DRAGGED.
ANYWAY

Do people's viewpoints change as they get older? Sure; they have experiences/overcome stuff that changes their perspective.

A 55 year old is just more likely to have had a heartbreak, and the emotional changes that come with it, than a 21 year old.
So yes, how people think, and what they want to do, changes over time.

It's not specifically aging that's doing it.

Plenty of things some people don't enjoy until they're 40 are things other people stayed up all night doing at 11.
"Chelsea the trend is that people pick calmer activities as they get more decrepit from age"

1. What you've identified is that everyone is either born disabled or becomes disabled. Disability doesn't make someone's hobbies less exciting or their existence less relevant
2. I liked drawing when I was like 4. I know plenty of spacebun Lollapalooza Gen Z types who draw all dingdang day. Not-physically-strenuous hobbies span the age gamut.

3. Disability also spans the age gamut as previously referenced
What's my point? I dunno.

I'M LYING yes I do

1. The things we associate with "getting old" are arbitrary
2. Treating aging as detrimental is garbage that, upon inspection, seems designed to make ppl work harder bc enjoying quotidian things means they're old & boring

GOODBYE
@amynewell because I know she gets joy out of my caffeinated tweet rants and also because I suspect she has some really interesting (and better informed) thoughts on the above
You can follow @HeyChelseaTroy.
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