by Renee P. Aldrich
For New Pittsburgh Courier
I often speak of society not being “user friendly” with regard to senior citizens. There are many negative presumptions about an aging population. Number one, with aging becomes diminished capacity, and sometimes there is a foregone conclusion that the older we get, the less we’ll be able to handle. Also, once we become older, somehow we automatically cannot hear. Have you ever noticed that many health care professionals and others who work with the senior population literally yell when speaking to us, usually when explaining or giving some type of instructions?
I wonder where this started. I am sure there was a time when these thoughts about “Seasoned Citizens” may have been appropriate. In the 18th and 19th centuries the average grandparent was 60 years old, had lots of ailments and/or may have needed support from their children or other family members. They are most likely already retired or maybe helping to take care of grandchildren. Here we are in the 21st century, with technological and scientific advances in medicine and healthcare. Not only are we living longer, but grandparents can be as young as 39-42, and some great grandparents are as young as 55. Could it be that as a society we have not mentally caught up with the changes, but instead maintained the same mindset that looks at aging as something that hampers life?
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shared some years ago in a Ted Talk that when she left her country and came to America for her graduate degree, unfortunately, her roommate was disappointed when she learned that Adichie, first, spoke English fluently, and second, after asking her to share some of her “tribal” music, was informed that it was Mariah Carey who led her playlist.
Additionally, her roommate was shocked to learn Adichie actually knew how to use a stove! “My roommate already felt sorry for me long before she saw me, and pity was a default position about me which concluded that because of the misery and poor development of my homeland, I could never be on the same sophistication or intellectual level as she,” Adichie said. “My roommate had a single story of Africa.”
I would offer here that Ngozi Adichie’s reference to a “single story” is the same concept society uses in defining the life or lives that seasoned citizens get to live. Society has read a single story around what it means to age, or enter the seasoned stage of life, when in actuality our lives, as individuals, are composed of many overlapping stories. It’s when we are exposed to a single story, as Chimamanda’s roommate was, that we make erroneous conclusions about a group of people, an individual, or about certain populations.
That “single story” concept that society has about seniors says that our capacity is drastically diminished, that we automatically lose the ability to function after a certain age and that because we are in our seasoned years, we are no longer interested in romance or sex or taking exciting trips or even in making a significant life change. These are the ill-informed ideas about seniors that result from the “single story.”
Conversely, there are many more stories of individuals over 65, like Ms. Joyce Sato (affectionately known as Miss Joy), who at 88 says she still “wants it all!” “I am a new breed of myself, I have traveled, I have deposited into others, and I worked a job until I was 81 years old; while the working part is over, nothing else is—I feel I have fresh experiences in front of me,” said Miss Joy.
There is also the story of folks like Reggie Howze and his new wife, Shawna, a seasoned couple who recently celebrated not only their wedding anniversary, but both their birthdays, all of which were in March. She turned 71 and he turned 81.
They celebrated in New York where they enjoyed tickets to the Tamron Hall Show. A highlight of the visit to the show for Reggie was an invitation to dance on stage along with others who also had birthdays that day. The couple also saw a production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (Reggie was a childhood friend of Wilson). Shawna is a master gardener, and Reggie has been a long distance runner and competed in many marathons over the years. He is currently training his wife in power-walking to compete in the National Senior Olympics in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2027. Reggie Howze competed and came in second place in the country in the 5K in the National Senior Olympics in 2025. Together they are starting an initiative they call, “Living Well With Reggie and Shawna.”
“We are 81 and 71 years young, and we’re sharing our journey of faith, love, and living well through moments like this,” Shawna Howze said.
Are you operating and making assumptions about seasoned citizens based on a single story? Let’s not do that. Let’s
broaden our view and
be on the lookout for all the other stories.
None of this is to suggest that as we age, we don’t have to shift the way we do things, because we might have to. The body changes as we age, but living a healthy lifestyle and doing what we can to minimize stress, eliminate poor habits like smoking, and halt excessive use of alcohol and other mind-altering drugs will enhance our capacity to have a life without limits.
