Laughing it off

This article was originally published on 27th September, 2020.

AGEISM- stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination against people on the basis of their age. Usually, this is a complaint of the old against the young. This makes other kinds of ageism invisible.
 
It is a word we hear very often in politics, and workspaces, but only to garnish casual conversation. The truth is, the prejudice this word represents is deeply rooted in our society. The meaning of this word has also broadened over the years. I am someone who has experienced it very closely and personally. My age is 15, and I will be 16 in a month. Already stereotyped as a disinterested party to ageism, right? It is very easy to do so. Such prejudices are so deeply ingrained and so unconsciously practiced, is it not anyone’s fault? Maybe, but they remain damaging, nonetheless. My journey with ageism is a case in point. 
 
 
I grew up in a semi-conservative family. My mother, a very religious woman, was conservative, but has now started to embrace today’s world. My father, on the other hand, a decade younger than my mother, is very open minded. I almost feel as if they keep rubbing off on each other. It’s like my mother is getting more open-minded with time and my father is getting more conservative. Between them, they raised me to the best of their abilities, and have done an excellent job. 
 
 
I was exposed to many adult problems ever since I remember, problems that were meant to be understood, handled and solved by some adult. I never had much pressure in the beginning to understand or solve them, but as time passed, I began to do it myself. And as soon as my teachers, family and friends realized that I was not doing a bad job at all, they encouraged me to do it. I also found myself in many situations that I had no choice but to deal with. I grew up with a sister two decades older than I am, she has Borderline Personality Disorder, an illness which lies on the border of neurosis and psychosis. You may guess the kind of Bollywood I saw growing up! Besides, I had to understand other adult family problems that happened with increasing frequency ever since I turned twelve. Mother nature probably thought that if I already had started gaining emotional maturity, maybe I should have the physical maturity to go with it. I started menstruating when I was nine. I barely knew what it meant. So now I had the hormones and growth of an average twelve or thirteen-year-old! I don’t see this in a negative light. My soul, body and mind had the opportunity to mature quicker, and to start thinking ahead of my time! Nothing wrong with that, right? I told myself this was an asset. In times of Badshah, Post Malone and Travis Scott, I had the opportunity of diving into Asha Bhosle, Jagjit Singh, Mohammed Rafi, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and so on. I was a well-argued atheist by the time I turned eleven. I started writing poetry in eighth grade, though much of it remains locked away. I entered and won my first Model United Nations in sixth grade. I competed with adults in youth parliaments and came up second to none. I got interested in politics and started my own blog, again in eighth grade. And I enrolled myself with the youth wing of a national political party as a volunteer at fourteen. By the time I approached my fifteenth birthday, I fell in love with all things a twenty-year-old would be in love with. My friends group ranged from sixteen-year olds to twenty- three-year olds.  My mother has been reconciling slowly with my growing up so fast.
Where is ageism in this? Have I just wasted your time? I promise you I have not.
I did not give it much thought at first, but I started seeing it everywhere soon enough. In school, I was always filled with curiosity. I had questions to ask, I had things to say and I was hungry for information. There were times when those questions would be considered too inappropriate for my grade- belonging in the adult realm- but to me they always seemed as obvious and important. Ever since I remember, I was laughed at because I was weird, different, the odd one out. Many times, I would say something which was considered a lie, just because I maturely told people to mind their own business and refused to prove myself to them.  People would often talk to me about their problems (“I lost my keychain”), started to cry because they slipped in public, etc. and I would feel like I was stuck with insecure babies, even though I was exactly their age. I was fun, outgoing, social; yet the responsible one. The one with an overwhelming sense of her duties, the mom of the group. 
 
When I would try and join the organizing committees of youth parliaments, I was initially shooed off for my age. “You are too young for this responsibility”, they would explain. I learnt to laugh it off, persist, get my way, or move on. 
 
At parties, I preferred talking to grandparents and parents of my friends. I respected and related with them. They loved me. If not with them, I would be in a corner baby-sitting a child or a dog. I felt most at home there. I always felt the need to be in the best books of all my friends’ parents and families. It was part of long-term relations. Little did I know that my generation had a word for this- “clingy”, and “intrusive”. Like much else, would laugh it off.

 As a political volunteer, I soon started handling their volunteer South Delhi social media. I was told to add people to my team. I would take interviews and go through resumes; and would sometimes reject them. The only thing I heard was- “Who is this kid to reject me?”, “She is not even educated enough”, and so on. But someone once told me that- when we drive through a street, stray dogs chase and bark at us. As soon as we stop, they stop barking. This means that an important proof that you are moving forward is the noise people make. They louder this news, the more you may be doing something right. I soon realized that hatred is born out of fear, pain, jealousy and ignorance. Like always, I just laugh it off.

When I used to introduce myself to people, especially those older than me, they would think of me as an intellectual, well-bred, cultured, even attractive person…till they discovered my age. I would suddenly become a “kid”, a “push-over”,“immature” “doesn’t know what she is talking about” and was condescended upon- “oh this is mature talk- you can leave” and so on. I thought the situation might improve if I tried explaining to them why I was so mature, and why they should treat me as an equal. I tried with a few people and it turned out two ways. Either they believed that I was genuinely mature and would treat me like an equal from then on. Or, mostly, they thought that I was just trying to fit in with my emotional baggage by lying, and the wise thing for them was to either get away from me- because I was “crazy”, or to treat me like a baby. The truth is, they were treating me like a normal fifteen-year-old, but I felt as if they were treating me like a three-year-old. In any case, I barely related with my generation, and this just made it worse. There were times when I would just say to someone- “Aye, this generation is so wasted. All they do is sneak out, party and smoke up.” And they would just laugh and reply, “Bro even you are from this generation.” I would laugh it off with them. I do not exactly blame people for this because even I get stunned sometimes when I realize I am just fifteen abnormally drawn into babysitting other people my age.

All of this is ageism. Judging someone and having a stereotype in mind just on the basis of someone’s age, without understanding their journey or getting to know them, is the most ignorant and immature thing that we can do. Yes, I will still have to wait for my legal age to do a lot of things because that is only when it will seem “right.” But as a community, as friends and family, maybe we can stop this pervasive discrimination. If we make conversation or a relationship with someone younger, and we enjoy it and feel comfortable without feeling odd- there should be nothing wrong with it and no one looking over our shoulders except to give us some advice, and check if we are safe, occasionally. Letting a person, you truly feel comfortable with, go because of their age- is the biggest mistake we can make. Let me cast the argument for my religious fellow citizens. According to Hindu tradition, the soul has a different age than the body. The soul lives on till the end of time but keeps inhabiting different bodies. And sometimes maybe we can tell ourselves that someone who is young and mature has an older soul with older memories and wisdom, hence it would be a sin to treat them any other way. Let’s finish ageism. Let’s love the soul and the mind, let us get rid of our hunger for right and wrong. Because, more often than not, that is an illusion, a bhram.

48 thoughts on “Laughing it off”

  2. 에그벳

    Undeniably imagine that that you said. Your favorite reason seemed
    to be on the internet the simplest factor to understand of.

    I say to you, I certainly get annoyed even as folks think about
    issues that they just do not know about. You managed to
    hit the nail upon the highest as smartly as defined out the entire thing with no need
    side effect , folks can take a signal. Will probably be again to get more.
    Thank you

  4. 온라인슬롯

    Having read this I believed it was extremely enlightening.

    I appreciate you finding the time and effort to put this
    content together. I once again find myself personally spending
    a significant amount of time both reading and posting comments.
    But so what, it was still worthwhile!

  7. 유로247

    Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your webpage?

    My blog is in the exact same area of interest as yours and my users would really benefit from some of the information you present here.
    Please let me know if this okay with you. Thanks a lot!

  8. 슬롯사이트

    Hey there would you mind stating which blog platform you’re working with?
    I’m planning to start my own blog in the near future
    but I’m having a difficult time making a decision between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal.
    The reason I ask is because your design and style seems different then most blogs
    and I’m looking for something completely unique.

    P.S Sorry for being off-topic but I had to ask!

  13. syday

    At last someone wrote something very important about such hot topic and it is very relevant nowadays.

  22. vum

    I was looking for this writing for a long time and thanks god by accident I found it. Thanks you.
    I like this one too:

  27. CharlesGit

    my friends from work and I have been looking about lately. The type of knowledge on this web site is one of a kind and needed and will help My wife and her kids in our studies a lot. It is obvious this forum has a significant amount of expertise concerning subjects on the site and this page and other categories and information really show it. I’m not typically on the internet most of the time however when I have a drink I am more often than not hunting for this sort of information or stuff similarly concerning it.

    1. Aekam Post author

      Yes I would love to- if there is anything specific you would like me to elaborate kindly let me know! Thank you so much for the feedback!

  30. pts terbaik sumatera

    Hey I am so happy I found your blog page, I really
    found you by mistake, while I was searching on Yahoo for something else, Anyways
    I am here now and would just like to say cheers for a marvelous post and
    a all round interesting blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t
    have time to browse it all at the minute but I
    have saved it and also added in your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read more, Please do keep up the great work.

Comments are closed.