I love the word mishmash because it describes what it is by how it sounds and the way it looks as well.
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There is a technical name for these sorts of words and I can’t spell it and therefore we don’t need to discuss it any further!
There is a ‘new’ word being used as well… well new to me ... ’conflating’ which apparently means putting two ideas together. I thought the word ‘combining’ did that job quite well so it is increasingly clear that I am getting older.
And that is one of the mishmash of ideas, responses, thoughts that are currently driving me crazy.
I thought a good whinge or at least a letting off of steam might prove helpful to me, and therefore others, but the mishmash is so dense it may not make sense.
So it’s not one long idea in this article, but a conflating of things that might be said to be held together by the theme about ageing during which people often have senior moments (forgetting and then remembering later at some inappropriate time) and bits of their bodies don’t behave as well as they used to, which is disconcerting 'til you get used to the idea.
So I am prepared to say I am getting older but I’m not prepared to say I am ageing. Because?
Well I am, but that’s because everyone is ageing from the minute they are born and ageing is natural for all of us all of the time.
Unfortunately, society seems to have dumped the idea of ageing onto people over 65 and even if you live another 30 years, you have to put up with being headed to aged care, being called aged, being seen as aged, feeling aged because of the incredible pace of current change and being told you are past it.
Being past it comes in many forms which are mostly unsympathetic, and often rudely, expressed.
It’s as if the normal, common human anxiety about dying can be ignored by being dumped as far away as possible. I would rather be seen as getting older (like everyone else) and eventually being seen as elderly.
Elderly care seems to offer or suggest more respect than aged care which has a doomed feeling about it as I have explained.
Just because your hands may tremble a bit and your mind is sometimes slower to respond, doesn’t mean that you are a special case. You are only doing what you have been doing all your life - getting older just like when you were two years old.
It’s all about change without insults.
I have commented before that I believe feeling powerless is the root cause of war, aggression, manipulation (eg some banks etc) murder, depression and crime etc. and is in part because many people are self-centred and anxious.
They do nothing for other people, live defensively and screw anyone who is so-called ‘less’ than themselves. I am excluding the sick and bewildered.
In ordinary society the wealthy have the most to lose and they know that.
What they don’t seem to understand is the fury someone else feels if they are ‘given’ an 50 cent per hour raise in a world where petrol is $1.16 per litre in the city and $1.41 in the country.
We are not idiots and it is insulting.
But there is no mechanism for complaint, and that’s arrogant and possibly guilty behaviour.
However, ultimately the most important bit of this mishmash, is my thanks to our shire CEO Aaron Van Egmond who is moving onto a bigger playing field in Melbourne.
I have always found Aaron to be intensely concerned to listen, and act, keen to drive council employees into business-like action and able to withstand the sort of moaning that can get going in Daylesford like a lightening fire.
I am very sad he is leaving because his capacity to achieve here has gained huge respect.
I wish this hard-working and personable man all the very best in Melbourne.
Many people who leave Daylesford come back. Anytime Aaron.