We’re All Just Passing Through

Let us consider ageing from the other end of the telescope.

Not as a statistic or a social issue, but as a destination. Your destination. Mine too, when we’re fortunate enough to reach it.

Twice this week I was made aware of age becoming invisible.

The first encounter took place in a supermarket. An elderly man was looking for Aspirin for his wife. The shop assistant pointed vaguely and said, “Aisle six.” The instruction seemed simple enough, but the man became lost almost immediately.

Around him, shoppers hurried through their routines, focused on lists, phones and schedules. Nobody noticed his confusion. Or perhaps they noticed and chose not to see it.

I spotted a shopper leaving her trolley to walk him to where he needed to go.

It was a trivial act, costing less than a minute. Yet it revealed something uncomfortable about modern life. We have become extraordinarily efficient at moving through our days, and remarkably poor at noticing the people who cannot keep pace.

The second encounter was more striking. An elderly woman was making her way across a café car park on a sweltering afternoon. Her leg was badly scraped and bloodied from a fall. The injury was obvious. She passed tables full of people drinking coffee and chatting, yet not one person stopped to ask if she was all right.

She was not invisible because he could not be seen. She was invisible because nobody looked.

My friend helped her to her car. There she explained that she had fallen and was struggling with the heat. More poignantly, she admitted she did not know how to work the air conditioning. The controls in the modern vehicle baffled her, so she simply endured the discomfort.

Waiting together until cool air began circulating, the elderly lady spoke about the frustrations of ageing. Not dramatically, not bitterly, but with a quiet resignation. Her body, once reliable, now failed her daily. Things that had once been effortless required thought and caution. Tasks he had mastered decades ago had become uncertain.

The tragedy of ageing is not simply physical decline. It is finding yourself in a world that no longer waits.

Once, these people were the busy adults hurrying through life. They worked, raised families, met deadlines and navigated the world with confidence. They were the people in motion while older generations struggled to keep up.

Now they find themselves confronting unfamiliar technology, complex systems and a society moving at a relentless pace. The person inside remains recognisably the same; only the body has changed.

Yet we often speak of elderly people as though they belong to another category of human being.

They do not.

They are simply us, further down the road.

Every elderly person hesitating at a crossing was once a young person striding confidently through life. Every frail man or woman struggling with a machine was once competent, capable and independent. The gap between “them” and “us” is far smaller than we imagine.

That thought returned to me when I read a story from a woman driving home with her son. She travelled the same route every day and usually paid little attention to it. Yet one afternoon she noticed an elderly woman standing at traffic lights.

Something seemed wrong.

Pulling over, she discovered the woman was not injured or lost. She was simply overwhelmed by the traffic. She had been trying to gather the courage to cross the road for several cycles of the lights.

The driver walked across with her.

A tiny act. Barely a disruption to her day.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=556674527202053 (0.16)

Yet she later reflected that the experience changed her perspective. Once she had stopped to help one stranger, she began noticing others. She became more aware of people around her and more connected to her community. Small acts of attention led to further acts of kindness and understanding.

Compassion, it seems, works like a muscle. The more it is exercised, the stronger it becomes.

We often imagine kindness as something dramatic, requiring sacrifice or heroism. In reality, it is usually much simpler.

It involves pausing. Looking. Asking a question. Offering a hand.

The elderly do not need our pity, and most would reject it. What they deserve is acknowledgement, patience and respect. Most of all, they deserve to be seen.

Because one day the supermarket aisles will seem longer. The traffic will feel faster. The instructions will become harder to decipher. The world will move just a little too quickly.

And when that day comes, each of us will hope that somebody notices.

Not because we are old.

But because we are still here.