How aging with compassion improves every generation's lives

Writer and beauty editor Val Monroe examines the nuances of compassion around aging. Val discusses how society treats older people differently and why no one talks about it.

Transcript

00:00

I wish we were more open and compassionate when we're talking about aging.

00:10

We are a deeply ageist culture, and that's something that I never really recognized until I became of the age

00:17

to appreciate it, which is 72. I think it started, probably when I was in my 70s that I began to notice that my opportunities might have become

00:27

somewhat more limited. And I think it would have had a profound impact on my relationship with my mom.

00:35

I don't feel like I was compassionate enough with her when she got to be old. Now, that I see what she was probably

00:43

going through when she was my age or for the last 20 years of her life, because she lived into her 90s, I'm just full of admiration for her,

00:52

for her courage, and her refusal to complain about anything. There's such a division between one age group and another age

01:03

group and another age group, even the fact that we have different names for them like Gen Z, and Boomers, and it causes a kind of isolation for each group.

01:15

I think it's not good for younger people either, and I wish that there were more acknowledgment of older people,

01:22

whether it's respect for the work they've done, respect for what they know, respect for what we can be doing.

01:29

It's part of the reason that I started my substack. As soon as I found something that re-engaged me with people,

01:35

it made me feel so much more generative and engaged and connected.

01:42

And I wish there were more ways for people my age to do that in our culture.