“The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland
“It’s all just a little bit of history repeating…”
The Propellerheads (with Dame Shirley Bassey)
Recently on Facebook I was part of a conversation about HIV and aging. There’s nothing particularly new in this – we are aging, spared imminent death by the treatments, but what will the long term effects of HIV be as we grow older?
The part of the conversation that bothered me and got me thinking was a comment made by a man about “youth” and how it’s their world and we must accept it on their terms, as we did when we were young. I replied that I hoped it was everyone’s world. While he agreed, his caution remained that we must accept that young people are the ones who determine the path and in the way they choose.
I thought about the word “terms” in this context. It implies that unless we bend who we are as individuals, compromise our principles and beliefs we are as much as useless in these modern times. And yet, everyone on the planet approaches the world on their own “terms”. From the socialist left to the righteous right to the poor and the rich, men and women, young and old – each of us has our own particular terms regarding how, to what level and in what way we choose to interact with others.
Suggesting that the “terms” of a youth driven world are all important is like accepting as reality the concept in the movie “Logan’s Run”: once we hit 30 years old, we off our sorry, old asses and get out of the way. Besides being short-sighted it’s also culturally-biased. North American European-based culture is certainly youth obsessed, but other cultures honour elders and look to them for guidance. Those cultures incorporate everyone’s voice in the mix, not just an arbitrary age group that has some kind of special “in” that the rest of us don’t.
And who are “youth”? In my generation, once you turned 19 you were an adult. Later that shifted to 25 and now it’s anyone from 12 to 30 years old depending on who you ask. If youth-ness continues creeping forward like this, the current generation of toddlers will be long dead – but still children at 96. Leave a pretty corpse, as they say.
Oscar Wilde said, “I am not young enough to know everything.” I think that’s an accurate account of youth. Young people approach the world wanting it to bend to them – “old” people know nothing (my Mother was a complete idiot until I was 22). It takes a certain amount of getting smacked upside the head by people who’ve been there, before we can open our minds to wisdom and the past and incorporate history into how we cooperate with the world. Without history, insisting the planet revolve on my terms as the “correct” ones is like walking blindfolded into a pitch black room – it won’t matter if I take the blindfold off, I still won’t see anything.
About ten years ago I had a conversation with a police officer. He was using words like “disperse” to describe the preference of the police department around sex trade workers and a particular hotel. My internal “terms and conditions” hated that language, but I stopped myself and realised that his words were just police jargon: there was no malice in it, no hatred. Once I relaxed, and let my rigidity drop, we had a conversation using both our languages and communication took place. If I had stuck to my “terms” I would likely have offered a lecture about “appropriate” language and he would have shut down – ending the discussion and any potential for relationship.
We all develop our own terms and conditions, our personal little contract, as we wander through life – HIV-positive or not. And those terms change as we get older and experience others’ opinions and ideas and shape our own. Things that are important to me today were not important 20 years ago, and things I could care less about now were imperative back then.
The terms of our involvement in society and in our own small HIV world are completely up to each of us. We can be inclusive and make sure that we all contribute regardless of age; or we can be exclusive and like the Hatter, the March Hare and the Door Mouse, there will be no room for anyone at the table.
In the end I believe we all want two very simple things – belonging and respect.
And there’s plenty of room for that.