I think notions about aging and getting older are among the last acceptable forms of bigotry in America. I got a message from one person – surely meant to be sympathetic – saying she understood why I might be thinking of selling the farm, as we often change when we get older.  But it felt more patronizing than sympathetic.

Her assumption  that I was thinking of selling the farm because I was getting older is typical, I think, of the way our culture has come to view aging – as a time when we must shrink our lives, downsize, get ready for the ultimate journey, give up on our ambitions and expectations. Phooey to that.

Aging, as it happens, has nothing at all to do with my thoughts about staying on the farm or selling it. I came to the farm when I was in my late 50’s, a time when I was supposed to be looking for my condo and getting rid of stuff.  I became a photographer when I was nearly 60. I have just begun writing children’s books, returning to fiction, and discovering the love of my life.

Coming to the farm was one of the best moves of my life, although it certainly defined conventional wisdoms about getting older.  My friends all thought I was crazy. So did my family.

In America, advertisers care only about between between the ages of 18 and 49 because they have many years of spending ahead of them. And in our society, it is money that defines expectations, not reality. I am surrounded by 90-year-0ld farmers who could run circles around me any day of the week, and who would find the idea that they are too old to be on their farms nearly insane, as well as insulting. They like having sex, too.

My ideas about selling the farm are simple. Do I want to be a writer or a farmer? Do I want to spend my day tending to fences and water mains, or writing novels, children’s books, taking photos and working on being creative. It takes little energy to have two donkeys and some sheep. It takes a lot more to write a novel. It’s a question of identity, not of sore knees (which I have some days.)

I am at a point in life where I am just beginning to consider life – creativity, travel, love, sex, challenge and opportunity. Do I want to live on a farm? Go to Costa Rica for a year? Join the Peace Corps? Do a photo book?

I am not, as the writer suggested, thinking of retreating from life  because I am getting “older” and need to be safe and less isolated. Quite the opposite. These are bigoted stereotypes and ought to be challenged as vigorously as other dumb stereotypes. Older people should not let the witless define them and their expectations. I have never had more energy, been in better health, or more looked forward to expanding my horizons, growing, learning and changing in positive and creative ways.

I should say that I am well aware of where I am in life. I have too few years ahead of me to do all of the things I want, or spend as much time as I would love to spend with Maria, my daughter, my work. But that reality will not define me or what I am, or where I love or what I do. Our culture would like older people to go away, so corporations can sell things to people with more money and buying time. Don’t do it.

Selling the farm is a tough decision mostly because I love it so much. As to getting older, I absolutely refuse to be bound or defined by our timid and health-care and money-obsessed culture into crawling under a rock and vanishing to the safer life. Nuts to that.