An Interesting Look at Aging

On Friday, we had our Senior Mentor luncheon, where we met our Senior Mentors for the first time. The Senior Mentor program was set up by my school to introduce us to serving the needs of the aging baby boomer population. We are allowed to set up teams of two students, and then each team is assigned to one Senior Mentor.

We had talked about Senior Mentors a lot before the luncheon, often with a weird anticipation. We weaved wild possibilities about them, playing a constant "What if?" game.

"What if our Senior Mentor is that guy, the one who talks shit to everyone else?"

"What if our Senior Mentor dies, right there, in the middle of the luncheon?"

"What if our Senior Mentor is a weird old guy who tries to grab my ass?"

Of course, this is telling of a few things. One is that medical students, with the potentially crushing weight of all of the challenges we face, have two choices: to laugh or to crumble. In the face of these things, we make light of them, which is a strongly interesting phenomenon. In not knowing what to expect, we had made a list of the things, controlling the situations in our minds if we could not control them in reality.

But when we went to the luncheon, most of us were very pleased with our Senior Mentors. Jacob got the mentor who talks shit to everyone, an 89 year old man who gave him the advice "Don't get old--it's not for sissies."

Joe and I got a great mentor, an 82 year old who shared with us his love of "everything." Joe described him as a man who is "hopeful without sappy," which was a perfect description. He has a great sense of humor, and I am really looking forward to working with him.

Later that night, I found this video, an interesting longitudinal look at aging, with video of 100 people--in order from ages 1 to 100--hitting a drum. It's pretty cool, actually, to watch the minute differences from age to age, realizing at the end the vastness of human experiences represented in these two and a half minutes.


via videosift.com