We should be honest about ageism and what it really is, a yearning for the innocent and spirited world of youth. We look at the young as a foreign land, one that we have visited and (often) fondly remember. We believe that their foreignness makes them immune to our conventions and imbues them with new perspective. We chase after what we have come to see as exotic and tell ourselves that the young will do the impossible simply because they aren’t familiar enough with the customs of our land to know that it isn’t possible.

And sometimes that’s true. Except when it’s not. But, for the true believers, the stories of the many don’t get in the way of the exotic few.

It reminds me of the trope, Born Sexy Yesterday, where a (typically male) protagonist encounters an alien or displaced being who is highly attractive and yet extremely naive (i.e. born yesterday). The protagonist is uplifted by them and they serve as their introduction to the world. More often than not, it goes even further. The protagonist is the character’s world. Their reference point for the rest of humanity and they view the mundane protagonist as profound as they don’t know any better, transforming them both in the process.

I believe youth plays the same role. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s what we want from the young. To be uplifted, seen as profound and transformed. We want to shape the young so that we can be shaped by them in turn.

Someone old can see through this desire even if they see us profound. They have bitten the forbidden fruit of experience and simply know too much to be awed by our mundane inanities. And so we shun them. Because they have better boundaries and are mirrors that remind us of just how mortal we are.

If the young are foreign strangers visiting our strange land, the old are our neighbors whom we’ve come to despise. We try to get away from them even though we are them. We all grow old. And yet we all despise ourselves for doing it.

Humans are a schizophrenic lot.