If it seems to you that everything breaks down into haves and have-nots, you are as smart as you think you are. It’s a barbell world. You are at one end or the other. The middle class that connects the two extremes grows thinner and bends under the stress until it adopts a parabolic shape seems almost cartoonish. Until it snaps.
In this stratified world, the ultimate have is not economic security. It is your health. Without that, any economic security you have is crushed pretty quickly. But health doesn’t just protect your pocketbook. It also lets you do many, many other things that make life meaningful.
The Independent captured this a few weeks ago in a story on the “wellderly”—the healthy, fit and active old. “Wellderly” is a handy portmanteau word that will become an irritating trope, like yuppie or dink (double income, no kids). Trust us.
Examples of the wellderly legion. From paragliding and marathon-running centenarians to 73-year-old Tamae Watanabe, who just broke her own record for the oldest woman to climb Everest. But it isn’t just in extreme sports. It’s also extreme generosity, followed by extreme powers of recuperation: In the U.K., 83-year-old Nicholas Crace has become the oldest living kidney donor in that country. Three days after the operation, “he was back riding his bicycle.”
It goes on. You are tired of reading about social revolutions, but this might be the real deal: an army of older, fit, well-heeled people with the time to do what they want. Travel, indulge themselves with food and liquor and sex, donate their time and experience to the less fortunate. In fact, when we get a good read on what the healthy and prosperous end of the barbell decides to do with its great gifts, it will be a fascinating revelation about human nature.
But you have to be fit to take part. Cut that sandwich in half. Take the stairs.
Image of senior citizen weight lifting by Shustov via Wikimedia Commons.
