An Advantage of Being Older

Reaching birthday #__ was really bad for me.  On my Facebook account I wrote that "I honestly do NOT see any advantage to getting older."  However, I recently thought of one advantage:

Older people enjoyed fuller experiences of performers and entertainments that are now considered "legendary."

As a teen, I watched the "Carol Burnett Show" every week and so I've seen every sketch they ever did, and I often laughed literally until I cried. Today, young people have only selected "best of" DVDs of the show available to them, not every skit the cast ever performed. This limits later generations' appreciation because they won't experience the breadth of humor in EVERY sketch they ever did, but more significantly it's impossible for young people today to watch the show in the context of the time it was presented originally. Cultural references and a sense of humor, defined by the time, are gone. So only those who watched the program in the 1970s can understand what really made it great.

I lived The Beatles in their heyday, and had innumerable additional experiences of them that later generations will never enjoy. And Johnny Carson, and... the list goes on. Every generation has its own list of "legendary" entertainers.

Being young certainly has its advantages, but understanding the cultural context of entertainment and social movements gives understanding that later generations will never genuinely feel (they can only understand it academically).

For example, the lifestyle and music of the "hippie" 1960s and the disco '70s.  I was there!  I was under 10 years old but I remember walking through San Francisco's Golden Gate Park with my older brother and cousin in about 1967 and seeing all the hippies. My mother had told us not to go to the Park because "those people are dirty and dangerous." However, I remember "those people" saying "Hi" to me, a little boy, with friendly smiles (including one particularly pretty blond girl). And then, when my cousin was hit by a car on our way back, I remember that everyone came running up to help. These were friendly helpful people, not dirty or dangerous people. And so I understood these young people's complaints about how older people ("the establishment") didn't understand them because my mother proved them correct. And as a pre-teen witnessing the Vietnam war on TV and Watergate, I understand the feelings of the time that made art and poetry in song such strong powers to energize and unify a generation in protest.

And in the 1970s, I HATED disco!  Young people today might look at all that with fun, but lemme tell ya, living in that time was HORRIBLE!  [2011 edit: ok, maybe disco DID have some catchy tunes...]

Only people who lived through the time of what is now "legendary" can fully understand why.

(PS: the photo on this article is my grandfather, after whom I was named. He certainly understood better than I ever could what life was like in Bohemia the few years on each side of 1900, then as a Czech officer in Russia after their Revolution, then living in China in the 1920s, and of coming to America in 1924 for a freer life of greater opportunity. I can only look back objectively, academically.  I cannot feel his fear at lying to officials about his travel plans so he could escape the tyranny of the times. Nor can I feel his hope and relief while aboard a ship bound for America.)