Who will you be?

​As ‘ism’s’ go, ageism is said to be the new sexism. I wonder about the value of identifying what I know to be pervasive symptoms of this discrimination. It does provide a lot of humour, and in that, perhaps, a way of coping with the reality of ageing. However, within every joke there lies an element of truth and the truth of ageing seems to terrify us. Why?

There is a term for it; gerontophobia. Simone Beauvoir (and many others) offer some insight:
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“If we do not know who we are going to be, we cannot know who we are: Let us recognize ourselves in this old man or in that old woman. It must be done if we are to take upon ourselves the entirety of our human state”