Act II

An interview with Mark Gerzon, author of "Coming Into Our Own: Understanding Adult Metamorphosis."

By PT Staff, published on September 01, 1992 - last reviewed on May 15, 2009

Another message is in our language. We call people "adults" from the age of 21 on. We have no other word to cover half a century, and when we do have other words like "elderly" or "aging" or "old fart," they're not positive. None of them are really seen as a recognition with any kind of integrity or achievement.

Television reflects this. Roughly 80 percent of the characters on television are between the ages of 25 and 40. That's demographically inaccurate. The message is "This is what life is about: people between the age of 25-40"

Our culture is built on the whole premise that to be young and to be consuming is to be living, and to be old is to be dying. I see it throughout our culture. I lived in Los Angeles and have worked in Hollywood. If you're between 40 and 60, as Shirley MacLaine has said, you can't find a role. That's why so many actresses start planning for cosmetic surgery at 25.

What does that say about our culture? The people that we look at on the screen are reflections of ourselves. And who do we want to look at? We want to look at people who are beautiful, whether it's Goldie Hawn or Elizabeth Taylor-people who keep on looking young, when we know that they could not possibly look that way without surgery. So we glorify them, even though we know what they've done to themselves had. They've cut themselves up in order to fit an image of what it means to be young.

I talked to a hairdresser who said to me, "I've got all these women coming in here to dye their hair, to stay young-looking.' You know the only problem with that? The young women can't find their elders. They can't find anyone to look up to because they all look like they do.

We've got a whole generation that's trying to pretend they're still kids. And then we say, "Why don't we have any leadership in America? Why don't we have any elders?' Well, nobody wants to look like an elder. That's why I recommend that we have a new stage of life called "elderhood." Adulthood, midlife, and elderhood. You say "elder" to some people and they take offense. They say, "You mean I look old?" No, you say, "You're someone I look up to and respect because of the wisdom of your experience. They can't even grasp this because it's so alien to our culture.

PT: That's a big thing for people to accept, a major societal sea change for people who don't have any respect. It's sort of a Western phenomenon.

MG: We see an old person and think, now there's a person who's fallen behind the times, who's out of date, who's an anachronism. In other cultures they see an old person and they say, there's an elder, there's someone with wisdom, someone with experience. That's because those are stable cultures. In our culture we say, "They don't know how to use a computer. They're before faxes, what do they know? They grew up in the Forties; they're Depression-era people. We look down on them, and it's a major loss, because we are looking down at our own future. Even our rock lyrics are filled with messages like, "I'd rather die before I get old'

The dangerous thing is that if you think that aging is meaningless-which is what our culture is saying-then your life is meaningless. If you accept that aging is meaningless, which I don't, then you've got to run away from you're own future. I think our generation is here to change that and to recognize that there is a positive meaning to aging, and that if we accepted that, it would be revolutionary. Positively revolutionary.

PT: In many ways the country right now has the same kind of ennui that we associate with midlife.

MG: That's absolutely true. At a time when the economic boom of the Sixties is dearly not going to continue very much longer, I think there's a very natural re-examination of what we get from material things. I think that's one of the reasons there is a renaissance of spiritual inquiry going on right now. People are realizing that one of the crutches we've had is our dependency on material goods. And, as you say, a lot of people are realizing that they are not going to get what they hoped they would, what they felt they were promised, in terms of material pursuits.

So now they are re-examining what growth and what success and what well-being means. They are trying to give other definitions for it because materially, they are not going to get the promotions they thought they were going to get, they are not going to get the salary increase or the splendid lifestyles or the vast estates. So the question becomes, where are you going? How are you changing? It has to become more internalized.

PT: Do you make a connection between this consciousness, this new sense of spirituality and recognition, and the sudden appearance of concern for the planet?

MG: It's no accident that we are living longer lives and talking about the second half of life at this particular point in the planet's history, because if we believe what all the environmentalists are saying, then we have to change the way we live on the Earth in the next 30 or 40 years. If we don't, our kids won't be able to live a healthy life.