What Happens When We're Real Old?
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Posted by Maryan Pelland Sep 27, 2006 |
This isn't news to me. I've been hearing and reading for heaven knows how long that the infrastructure and systems in our country are just not adequate to accomodate the doubling of the senior cisitzen population that will occur in the next 25 or so years. Twenty five years isn't a long time...what were you doing 25 years ago? Remember clearly, don't you? It was 1981.
Here's where we stand. About half the cities and towns in the U.S. are not even looking at ways to accommodate our old age. We're the largest generation anyone can remember. We didn't crop up yesterday, and a lot of people who should be brainstorming, aren't.
Think about this. Some of those people who should be brainstorming are us. We, the boomers, still hold a lot of offices -- local, national, state. We have clout and we're in charge of a lot of stuff. We can vote. What's our problem? Why aren't we being proactive?
We, as a nation, are fairly unprepared for health care issues, housing issues, plans for enabling elderly people to stay at home longer, workforce planning, services, driving problems, nutritional needs, and exercise needs for seniors.
When you get down to it, we're not operating in a vacuum, either. Other countries -- Canada, Japan, China. You name it. Story is the same. Right now, Canada is beginning to think about what will happen when a whole bunch of elderly drivers are on the road in a dozen or so years.
Among the people who are facing the issues headon, there are some interesting ideas. In Japan, they're studying ways to encourage neighborhoods to organize senior services and assistance on a volunteer basis. Some states in the U.S. are coming up with programs that will help a lot -- transportation services, expansion of meals-on-wheels-type programs, and more mobile medical screening vehicles, to name a few. It's not enough.
In theory, we'll live a lot longer than our parents did. We should be healthier and more active than previous generations, if for no other reason than we know more now and have at least some more opportunities.
But wouldn't it suck if our lives were either shortened because of over-crowded everything and too high of demands on it all, or the quality of life diminished (as it has been doing for many people over the past ten years)?
I shudder to consider a world where we warehouse old people like in the prophetic sci-fi movies of the 1960s and 1970s. I'm gogin to be one of those old people. We supposedly have more leisure time now than before. Is it time for the baby boomers to become activists? Each and every one of us?
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