GETTING OLD: DEALING WITH CHANGE

There are many unpleasant things about getting old.  Perhaps the least obvious and most difficult to understand is dealing with change.

Life is always changing.  The things you did ten years ago are no longer in fashion.  The ideas about politics or the economy or whatever have changed,  and you are no longer leading a charge into the future.  Or your views, which haven't changed, are now radical and ARE the direction to which people are heading.  

The world is changing.  There are new countries,  new problems,  changing alliances,  new literature,  new art, new culture, new values,  and new problems.  One group of people is in favor of the changes,  whatever they are, and want to press further.  And another group views all these changes as a breakdown in basic values, and wants to stop the changes, and go back to the way things were.  Must I choose which group to join:  am I part of the new group for change?  or am I trying to maintain tradition and the old values?  

The reality is that I cannot be either one.  The world is changing, and I am part of the flow, and my ideas and thoughts are being molded by this process, even when I think I  manage them independently, and decide what to think for myself.  Getting old gives you a perspective that helps to clarify this.  In my 20s, I thought I understood the world, and how I wanted to participate with it.  In my 30s, this changed because the world was changing and I did not have the same opportunities.  In my 40s, what mattered was how the economy (of the world) influenced my family.  

As the decades passed,  I found that views that seemed important and real to me were fantasies.  J. Edgar Hoover wasn't saving the US from Communism, he was distracting us from organized crime to protect their threat to expose his gender issues.  JFK wasn't a guiding light for a new age,  but a drug addled and confused man who made decisions that looked "progressive" but were reactions to his political situation, like going into Vietnam. The Vietnam war was 20 years of disruption in the US and south Asia for no purpose.  The influence of the Chinese remains, which was first recognized by Kissinger.  Reagan is a hero to Republicans and the rich, but dismantled much of the security of the country, under the direction of others, because he was demented for much of his terms. He, along with Bush took credit for "defeating" Communism,  because the US intelligence  sources (run by Bush) had little understanding that the Russia had already fallen apart from within; it had nothing to do with the US.  President Clinton offered the return to an idealistic view of the country with social support, equality, and fairness.  Instead, he gave us sexual escapades including Epstein's misdeeds, higher incarceration of minorities, and dismantling of the protections of the economy for onshore production, and banking safety.  

I am forced to accept how limited my understanding was of issues at the time, and how little was shared by sources of information in a "democratic" country.  IF I HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING IN LIVING THROUGH THESE YEARS, IT IS "WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET". YOU WILL BE INFLUENCED BY THE SURROUNDING CULTURE IN WAYS THAT GIVE THE ILLUSION OF MAKING DECISIONS, WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO MAKE THE BEST DECISION.  (And often leaders will not have the information either.)

I sit with other elders, and hear that things are "falling apart",  "there are no values anymore",  and other criticism of the changes the country is going through.  None of this is new.  The country has always been poorly organized,  its values have been manipulated throughout its history,  and changes have occurred,  and been resisted,  and sometimes benefited, and other times were useless.  I have lost the confidence that I am informed, and trust the basis for my decisions.  I look back on the decisions I, and others, made and see that they were not based on good information.  

I have two choices: I can learn from this and realize that I am being misled right now, and must be more careful and humble about what I think I know.  OR I can become fixed and rigid in my understanding of the world as I knew it, and criticize the changes that are going on, (become an old curmudgeon).  The first seems like the best idea, so I wonder why I and so many others so often choose the second.