SHELVING SENIORS?

When you're 20, you're going to live forever. When you're 50, you suspect this is not true. When you're 70, you notice something creeping up on you. That's right -- old age and all it means in a youth-oriented culture...!

Democracies by nature are not hierarchical arrangements. Social pyramids with honored elders at the top make little sense. The ideal of individualism means everyone at every age has the right -- and obligation -- to blaze their own trails. And so the ancient notion of the young caring for the old grows more irrelevant.

Entrepreneurs may not read the geriatric research about aging, but they do read the Census Bureau about numbers. Every new member of AARP is potentially a new customer for what we once smiled "old people's home."

We don't call them that anymore.

The flashy new lexicon now includes: Senior Communities...Adult Living...Senior Campuses. What's more, the geography has changed as well. No longer just Florida and Arizona, it's everywhere USA. Where the amenities abound. Such as day spas...aquatic centers...cyber learning labs....activity hubs....themed restaurants...wellness gardens...smart home technologies.

Damn, suddenly it sounds as if growing old is fun! Maybe Bette Davis was wrong when she grumbled, "Growing old ain't for sissies!"

But then -- as you twinge with arthritis and are tortured by lost opportunities -- you look in vain for what you most want to find in these splendid brochures. Some reason to believe that independent living does not mean independent of the rest of society. That our amenities are not disguised isolation. That our gray lives still count in a green world.

Of course, this takes effort on the part of those of us in here. But no less so than on the part of those still out there. The best of worlds is still a We World.