Opinion

Voldemort

By David Parmer

When I read the first Harry Potter book I was amused and intrigued by the fact that the characters dared not speak Lord Voldemort's name aloud. Anyone who did was quickly hushed up.

Finally, one day, I had an insight, a flash of inspiration: the wickedly successful J.K. Rowling (one teeth-gnashing British journalist bemoaned, "She has more money than the Queen.") was having some fun with us. Take apart the name, and you have at least two words that cannot be said aloud in our society: "olde" (old) and "mort" (death). I think she is pointing out that society desperately does not want to hear about age and death.

Recently my wife said, "That beard makes you look old." I replied, "I am old." I knew her meaning was that if I got rid of the beard I would look less old, or more young. The truth is I don't want to look younger, or pretend that I am not old. The gray hair and beard are witness that I have been here for a long time and have done a lot of things, some of them even OK. The hours, the days, the weeks, the seasons themselves all tell us there is a natural order, a progression. And this progression is from youth to middle age to old age and eventually to death. What's more, time takes its toll, wrinkling our skin, turning our hair to gray and then to white and making our eyes dim.

In this matter, I take solace in the words of George Sheehan, who writes in his book "Running and Being": "I am aging from the neck up ... I am elderly enough to have attained a look of wisdom, middle-aged enough to have a body that allows me to do what I want; and a face that lets me get away with it."

In his recent book "Healthy Aging," Dr. Andrew Weil writes: "Yet the nonacceptance of aging seems to be the rule in our society, not the exception. A great many people try to deny its reality and progress. Two of the most obvious ways of doing so are the use of cosmetics products and cosmetic surgery."

One can join society's great conspiracy and pretend to remain forever young no matter how foolish one looks or how impossible the idea itself. This I will not do.

The denial of aging and death results in middle-aged people not only dyeing their hair (and usually badly) but also getting hair transplants, face lifts and tummy tucks for their generally abused and neglected bodies. It is as if they are standing in a stream and grabbing handfuls of water in an effort to hold back the flow or commanding the autumn leaves, "Stay green!" It is not only useless, but also sad.

Irish poet W.B. Yeats in his poem "Sailing to Byzantium" writes:

"An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing..."

I think Yeats got it right: middle age and beyond is a time for the celebration of the richness of the spirit, not for dying.

(516 words)

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Discussion: Discuss other ways in which people/society denies aging.

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Shukan ST: Dec. 2, 2005

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