Friday, January 15, 1999
Throw-away mentality hurts everyone in society
DISPOSAL: Fear of aging exiles elderly, homeless, post-Christmas
pine trees
As I trudged up the hills of fog-ridden San Francisco last week,
the straggly remains of Christmas trees confronted my impertinence.
Their bodies lined the pavement in mounds, forgotten soldiers
wounded in urban battle. They watched me from puddles of sap and
pine needles, now brown from prolonged exposure to sun. They
symbolized more than the end to another fastidious holiday season,
they provided a pathetic illustration of our society’s throw-away
mentality. More doleful, however, was the realization that our
throw away mentality also applies to people.
As I looked at the withered Christmas trees, I thought back to
their previous era of glory. Just one week before they had been
perched in lustrous living rooms throughout the city, and adorned
with bright lights. Gleeful children opened presents beneath them.
Families threw parties to adorn them. Guests commented on their
grandeur. And before then they had grown naturally in lush forests
of fellow pines.
One of my earliest memories as a child is that of our family’s
annual voyage to Half Moon Bay, a beautiful coastal town about 40
minutes from San Francisco. Every year, at the beginning of
December, we would go there to cut down our own Christmas tree. We
climbed over countless hills and trudged through mud, in search of
the perfect tree. It took quite a while, as someone would
inevitably find fault in every tree.
At last, after many hours and miles, we would find that perfect
tree. The irony is that no matter how perfect the tree, it always
ended up on the curb a month later.
All too often, we use things for a short while and then discard
them when they are no longer useful. Much like the case of the
Christmas tree, this mentality applies primarily to two groups in
our society – the elderly and the homeless.
Take, for example, my own life experience. I have always
harbored a great fear of growing old. I link this to two factors,
the first being our societal perception of the elderly.
In general, we associate age with loss of faculties, both
physical and mental. When I was a child, the first prong terrified
me. The idea of not being able to run freely was foreign. There was
a senior center by my elementary school and I had seen the
difficulty with which people went about their routines. Walking –
which came so easily for me – required a third leg, or cane, and an
excruciatingly slow pace. Now, I find that what I fear more is
general loss of my independence.
I, like most in society, revere autonomy. One of my primary
goals is physical, mental and economic self-sufficiency. Society
tells us that with age comes a gradual decrease in independence.
People retire and no longer work. Their bodies become worn and
tired. Most petrifying of all is the lingering possibility of
senility. And what occurs when the inevitable ensues?
People are put out on a curb like Christmas trees in January – a
phenomenon otherwise known as rest homes. The elderly are viewed as
a burden, and it is convenient to throw them away. When they are
sequestered in rest homes, we don’t have to be bothered with them.
More importantly, we are not confronted with the tacit reality of
our similar fates.
The second factor influencing my fear of aging and our disposal
of the elderly is a societal obsession with youth and abhorrence of
age. As a child, I didn’t have much contact with the elderly. When
I did, their appearances frightened me. Many had lost their hair
and had wrinkles on their faces. One woman in particular, who often
walked by my school yard, had a hunchback much like that of the
witch in Hanzel and Gretel.
Beauty is revered – even at a young age I came to the conclusion
that youth paralleled beauty. This was influenced by many factors,
one being that people in our culture struggle relentlessly to
clutch onto their youth. There is an entire industry of plastic
surgery and anti-aging cream built upon fear of age.
Wrinkles in our culture are abhorred and gray hairs are plucked
or dyed. People dream of encountering some magical fountain of
youth so that they may remain interminably young. Yet, in other
cultures, the elderly are revered and looked to for guidance or
wisdom. It seems to me that this is a much healthier outlook, since
– despite what some would have you believe – we all must inevitably
age. We might as well perceive the process positively and accept
the course of nature gracefully.
There is another dimension to the rest home phenomenon: the
effect it has on the elderly. Over vacation, I visited my
grandmother in her rest home. She has changed drastically in two
years. I remember her as vibrant throughout my childhood. On
Tuesdays, she would pick me up from school and take me to
McDonald’s to get the toy of the week. She told stories about El
Salvador and of my grandfather whom she divorced years back.
Most prominent in my memory, however, are her eyes which looked
like deep, chocolate pools. She had a mischievous spark in them, an
inextinguishable twinkle.
Now she doesn’t even know who I am.
She has lost a significant amount of weight, and her once
flaming red hair is a dull gray. She is soft spoken and cries a
lot. Her spark is gone – living in that rest home smothered it. She
should have been surrounded by loved ones in her twilight years.
Instead she is with strangers – and in the process, I have become a
stranger.
Another group of strangers often without name and humanity are
the homeless. They too are disposable people within society.
Consequently, we look upon them with disdain instead of
compassion.
In fact, many feel justified in their open expressions of
disgust and judgment in comments such as, "Get a job." This is
because our society is founded upon the Puritan Ethic, which
includes the primary tenants of hard work, self-reliance and
self-sufficiency. To us, the homeless are the antithesis of this
work ethic.
Due to their flagrant vulnerability and inability to provide for
themselves, we view them as failures, so for 363 days of the year
we throw them away. Then, on Thanksgiving and Christmas, our guilt
breeds benevolence and we work in soup kitchens or toss quarters
into empty cans.
The irony is that though we thank self-sufficiency and hard work
for our success, we all manipulate social networks in order to
achieve our ends. We have the funds and backing for an education.
We have families which support us. We have connections. We are
lucky and most of the time we are ungrateful, but in the words of
John Donne, "No man is an island entire to itself; every man is a
piece of the continent, a part of the main."
It is not often that we see our lives in the faces of others,
particularly the disadvantaged. It is much easier to walk by in an
oblivious haze, never noticing that the face we see on another is
in fact our own.
Thankfully, most will never know the pain of homelessness, but
we will all inevitably age. We must make the time in between more
than a frivolous pursuit of youth and wealth. Remember that
children learn by example.
For your sake, teach them not to throw people away.
Roca is a second-year communication studies student. E-mail her
at [email protected].
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