Last Sunday I was Refereeing a swim meet in Cayman at this pool. As one heat was ready to start and the ten-year-old girls were in the pool ready to start their Backstroke race, the starter made an error and announced the race as a Breastroke event. Fast as you like, one of the ten-year-olds looked over and said, firmly and calmly “it is Backstroke, not Breaststroke”. That was us corrected! I looked at the heat sheet, recognised her surname, looked across the pool to the parents and spotted her mother. Last time I had seen that 10 year old she was a few months old and in her mother’s arms.
The day before I had flown down from Miami to Cayman on Cayman Airways. The co-pilot was young, so young that perhaps his full beard was there to make him look more mature. He is 25 and was in the same class at school as my oldest son!
I guess what has been coming to mind more and more, then, is that I’m embracing the passage of time and watching others grow. Sometimes I’ve played a part on that journey too, which adds another lovely layer to the role of elder.
Today curating a post by Chip Conley on the subject, called:
Liberating “Elder” from “Elderly.”
You probably didn’t know it, but “Yankee” was a derogatory term of the Brits to describe the new world upstarts but was soon adopted by New Englanders themselves (and many a baseball fan, centuries later).
Similarly, Malcolm X and other leaders helped our country’s African American population embrace the word “Black” in the 1960s even though it was a word many racists had used to describe them.
Southern comedians like Jeff Foxworthy have taken back “Redneck” as a proud word that defines their identity.
And, when you were a kid on the playground a generation ago, you didn’t want to be called “Queer,” but LGBTQ folks have re-appropriated that slang and made it cool.
“Elderly” represents the last 5-10 years of your life, but “Elder” is a relative term. If you’re a forty-year-old Gen-Xer surrounded by Millennials and Gen-Zers in their twenties, you’re likely an elder. Moreover, today, the average age for someone moving into a nursing home is 81 (compared to 65 fifty years ago). In other words, there are a lot of people who qualify as elders but are not yet elderly.
Reclaiming the word “Elder” and giving it a modern twist won’t be the first time a demographic group has taken back a term, turning a pejorative into a symbol of pride. During my time at Airbnb, I started to recognize that a new kind of elder was emerging in the workplace. Not the elder of the past who was regarded with reverence. No, what is striking about the Modern Elder is their relevance: their ability to use timeless wisdom to address modern day problems. A Modern Elder is the perfect alchemy of curiosity and wisdom.
Own the word; it gives you power.
Chip Conley, Wisdom Well