When I was five years old, a neighbor from the town opened the door for me. She missed her daughters and I missed a friend to play with. We were pioneers of that then unpopulated swamp. The woman took me so seriously in our conversation that, fascinated by this treatment, I went every day at the same time as if it were an appointment. It was the great lesson of my life: friendships have no age and those who believe it and only relate to those in their age group lose perspective and experience. Another friend, in this case a woman in her eighties who was a professor of Physics, confesses that if at her age she finds it difficult to go out and socialize, it is because in stores, at the hairdresser, at the pharmacy, when people address her, they raise the tone of voice, as if she were stupid or underage, and that tone that lowers her to who knows what inferior status has ended up condemning her to not enjoying interesting conversations. It is not known at what age a person begins to be considered as not understanding messages well, perhaps when someone leaves the labor market. Or when you are old enough to receive the gold card. If this were the case, it would not be amiss if with said card the beneficiary were given a sign to sew on their jacket, like a Star of David, with different prerogatives: preference for sitting on public transport and on the few street benches that are remaining, but inability or exemption from having a voice in the public debate. Things are clear.
The fact is that it is difficult for me to imagine how the fact of winning the gold medal for the oldest country on the planet is going to be compatible with the growing ageism that despises the opinion of its elders: the disdain of a productive minority for a majority that is living now its third act; and the future of a female population entering old age while at the same time caring for people who are about to abandon them forever. That is the panorama.
So why is there so much arrogance on the part of these mature young people who live as if the future were not going to reach them? Are they so blind with their present that they do not imagine that they are going to be the next replacement? I thought about it last Sunday observing the progress of the demonstration for public health, a flood of people who went down Alcalá Street to reach Cibeles and in the process converge with that other call that protested against the presence of the extreme right, for be the same day that Milei bellowed against the “aberrant” social justice. I thought about the ages of life walking among those protesters who never give up, because what my eyes saw were people, for the most part, over fifty, and from then on. This is usually the case: general causes that affect the entire population mobilize less than those that define our identity; sad, yes, when health or education should be the umbrella under which we all protect ourselves. But something has been done wrong, of course, so that generations do not merge into the same cry. In the same way that women are not a group, but rather half of the population, older people are not either, although this era favors that hateful segregation. We talk about older women as the driving force of cultural activities, but isn’t it true that the phenomenon is observed with condescension? We know that they are the ones who stop the rise of the extreme right with their votes, why then are they ignored in political discourse? We talk so much about those gentlemen who once held power and who now show their resentment on TV, why don’t we look at those who never ruled but today continue to take to the streets to defend the inalienable right to abortion, to healthcare for all, to the depleted public education? Isn’t your voice more necessary than ever?
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