Growing Old in an America Not Meant for the Aged
It is not that America intends to be cruel to its elderly. The cruelty is more of a by-product—an afterthought of a society besotted with youth, energy, and innovation. There is no malice in the dark staircases of Broadway theaters, only the thoughtless assumption that everyone is twenty-five and spry. But for the woman with aching knees, the man with dimmed eyesight, or the war widow with a trembling hand, a night at the theater is less a pleasure than a polite form of suffering. The entrances are narrow, the lighting inadequate, the bathrooms elusive. The entire affair feels like an obstacle course—one where the prize is the privilege of sitting uncomfortably in a cramped seat.
Even the simplest acts become trials. To enter a New York City taxi, for instance, is not unlike climbing into a child’s toy car. The seats are too low, the doors too narrow, and the driver too impatient to offer assistance. I have watched an old gentleman, perhaps once an officer in some forgotten war, wrestle with his coat and cane as though he were attempting to disarm a wild animal. No one came to help him. No one looked up. In New York, time is precious and sympathy is a luxury few afford.
Then there are the airports—those cathedrals of hurry. What began as marvels of modern engineering have become endless corridors of stress and noise. For the elderly traveler, navigating the security line is a vaudevillian ordeal: shoes off, bags searched, belts removed. And all this before embarking on what can only be described as a long march to the gate, a walk that recalls the more dispiriting passages of the Old Testament. There are carts, yes, but they are often elusive, and their drivers possess the air of men who have seen too much and now wish to see no more.
One must also consider the general state of American cities, which are often described as “walkable” with a certain pride—though never, it seems, by anyone who walks with difficulty. The pavement is cracked, the curbs are high, and the traffic signals provide just enough time for a brisk youth to make it halfway across. God help the slow or the uncertain. Cyclists whiz past like dragonflies, never warning, never slowing. In these cities, a man with poor hearing and unsteady feet becomes an unwanted relic—something in the way.
The country home, once a haven for the elderly, offers little refuge now. Most houses were built without thought for ramps, wide doorways, or bathrooms one can use without a gymnast’s balance. “Aging in place,” we are told, is the dream. But in practice it means struggling with stairs, slipping on tiles, and retreating more and more into the safety of one room. One does not age in place so much as retreat into it.
As the U.S. population ages, everyday life—from theaters to taxis to terminals—remains an obstacle course of indifference, revealing a society unprepared to honor the dignity of its elders.
In the autumn of life, when a man might wish for gentler roads and simpler comforts, he is instead confronted with the sharp edges and cold indifference of a world designed for the impatient and the unreflective. In America, to grow old is not only to be overlooked, but to be subtly punished for the very endurance that brought one to this advanced stage of life. One might have hoped for kindness or even a touch of ceremony—but what one finds instead is hazard, difficulty, and often, humiliation.
I do not suggest that we pity the old. They do not need pity. But perhaps they deserve a world that considers their presence not as a problem to be managed, but as a condition of a civilized society. They have worked, paid taxes, fought in wars, raised children, and carried forward the very culture that now finds them too inconvenient to accommodate. To discard their needs now—when they walk a little slower, see a little dimmer, and ask for a railing or a bench—is not only short-sighted, it is deeply ungracious.
The country home, once a haven for the elderly, offers little refuge now. Most houses were built without thought for ramps, wide doorways, or bathrooms one can use without a gymnast’s balance. “Aging in place,” we are told, is the dream. But in practice it means struggling with stairs, slipping on tiles, and retreating more and more into the safety of one room. One does not age in place so much as retreat into it.
I do not suggest that we pity the old. They do not need pity. But perhaps they deserve a world that considers their presence not as a problem to be managed, but as a condition of a civilized society. They have worked, paid taxes, fought in wars, raised children, and carried forward the very culture that now finds them too inconvenient to accommodate. To discard their needs now—when they walk a little slower, see a little dimmer, and ask for a railing or a bench—is not only short-sighted, it is deeply ungracious.
One is reminded of those continental hotels in the years between the wars, where the staff, though underpaid and overworked, still retained some sense of ceremony, of quiet reverence for the well-dressed widow from Sussex or the retired clerk from Antwerp. A chair was brought. A bag was carried. A person’s dignity, even in decline, was not negotiable. It was understood that the end of life ought not to resemble its beginning—full of helplessness and condescension—but should, in some small way, be ennobled.
America, for all its wealth and technical wizardry, seems unable to offer the old anything but logistical difficulty. The future hurtles ahead—driverless cars, biometric everything, restaurants where the menu is read off a screen with lettering the size of a flea. The country’s cultural obsession with convenience has somehow created a world extraordinarily inconvenient for the one demographic that might truly benefit from a bit of forethought.
And yet, the irony is crueler still: this future belongs more and more to the elderly. They are not a footnote in the story of America, they are the headline. In a decade’s time, more than one in five Americans will be over the age of 65. That statistic ought to be a clarion call. Instead, it is ignored in favor of shinier narratives—startups, influencers, breakthroughs. No one seems eager to build a better airport gate for a grandmother, but a great many engineers are keen to reinvent the sandwich.
There is, of course, no single solution. Ramps and elevators are helpful, but insufficient. What’s needed is a shift in attitude—a quiet social decision that the old are not simply “still here,” but still central. A recognition that frailty does not negate intelligence, that slowness does not equal irrelevance, and that every footstep taken by a stooped man on a cracked pavement represents a triumph far greater than any youth sprinting for a rideshare.
In the end, the measure of a society is not how it treats its winners, or even its children, but how it sees the ones who have endured. America, for all its promise, has not yet figured out how to grow old with grace. But there is still time. One hopes—perhaps vainly, but not without feeling—that someone, somewhere, will build a world where growing old no longer feels like a punishment, but like the quiet reward it was always meant to be.
