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Active Aging and Self-Esteem

E-mail: yahnk001{at}umn.edu

In the videos reviewed below, aging is a time of activity, engagement, renewal, self-discovery, contentment, and even risk taking. Elders find self-esteem based upon their participation in community. Although the communities vary greatly—ranging from a shared workplace to a nursing home beauty parlor to a community of trapeze artists and students—the benefits of belonging and sharing common values are obvious. In Age No Problem a Dutch filmmaker, Wim Schepens, enters and observes a community of elders that have found acceptance, and a home of sorts, in the workplace at Vita Needle, a company in Needham, Massachusetts. Almost all of the 35 employees of the company are elders; their average age is 73. Schepens combines direct interviews with the president of the company, Fred Hartman, and several of the employees with direct cinema scenes showing the workers interacting in a variety of ways. The dominant visual metaphor of the film is an image of the two-story stairway that leads from the street to the working floor. Bradley J. Fisher analyzes this image in his review below. The title of the video may reflect a linguistic anomaly: If one reads the title as Age Is No Problem, or Age—No Problem, the meaning becomes clear.

The next two videos portray contrasting communities with differing levels of activity. In the first case, More than Skin Deep, the filmmaker conveys the rhythms of the beauty-parlor experience for older women in a nursing home. The simple act of "having one's hair done" is revealed as a stimulus for enhancing self-esteem. The filmmaker, David Gaynes, previously worked at this nursing home in Fairfield, Connecticut, and returned to make the video about one small corner of the overall nursing home experience. In Learning to Fly an old man shares his fascination with the art of trapeze. Sam Keen signed up to learn trapeze when he was 62. When he joined the trapeze community, he discovered metaphors that extended far beyond the physical activities he sought to master. Keen shares profound lessons about growing old and maintaining vitality, finding a sense of purpose in life, and learning to accept continued risk taking at all stages of the aging process.

Footnotes

Robert E. Yahnke, PhD

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