Thursday, July 28, 2011

Reaching the Big 50

Just a personal observation. I listened, conversed, and watched all around me. My sign states I'm a great observer, and I think I am. To get to my point one thing I do think plagues society as a whole is the labels we put on things/typecasting. I know we always are talking about the age crisis. But why has society become so obsessed with age. Everywhere you turn you see 50+ eligible for AARP, If you're 50 or over, 50+ senior citizen discount. Really? Although it's nice to obtain such discounts and eligibility, why do we as a society press so much on this? Why has this become such a factor in order to live a decent life and why is it so darn important to always be pointing it out?

No where do you see if you're 20+ you could do this, or have you considered this now that you're 20, so on and so on. The only other factor where a stringent age notability takes place is 18 and below. Checking ID's. But then that doesn't stop you from achieving things. Don't get me wrong being 50 shouldn't stop you either, but it's just the attitude people have and envision that if you're 50 or over life is down hill.

You know it's clearly proven in Psychology circles that if you constantly dwell on things and always referring to things eventually you'll start reacting to those kind of things. Look for years and even into days social economical circles you're told "be around positive influence because negativity will keep you down". Has Physiologists determined our make-up as human life changes when we reach 50? Do we stand out as a population for being different than anyone under 50? Have we grown tails that's become so noticeable we need to be caged only to be looked at and laughed at?

So why do we put so much emphasis on hitting the big 50? Shouldn't we be inspiring without using the age category in advertisements, things we do, things we don't do as just a regular day in life with out being stigmatized with the "ut oh.. you've reached the point in life where you being thought of as less human". It's kinda like watching a sitcom like "the Office" where as Steve Carell is this dumb person, counter intuitive boss who can't run a business to save his life. Every time you see him in another movie he just doesn't seem right because he's been typecast-ed as being a stupid person.

Sorry off on a tangent, but it really fits the role of discrimination. Why is it so important that you be within a certain age group to be considered still worthy of (shhhsss I don't want to say it to loud).... a productive life style?

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