Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .

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Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

Aging

November 05, 2021 • Abigail L. Rosenthal • Season 1 • Episode 10

0:00 | 6:20

Aging is about stratagems plus the overview. My stratagems are Denial, Disguise and (to paraphrase Jefferson) “Eternal Hostility” against every form of aging known to womankind.

Aging is about stratagems plus the overview. My stratagems are Denial, Disguise and (to paraphrase Jefferson) “Eternal Hostility” against every form of aging known to womankind. I think of aging as itself a sort of disguise thrown over the girl one really is – disguise that, if some reports are to be believed, we throw off once we reach the Other Side. What appeals to me about Shankari Mai Jiew, pictured above, is her answer to aging: don’t do it.

What are we fighting to maintain? Our real self? Wouldn’t that be better safeguarded by being open and unconcealed about the number of one’s years? If unconcealedness is so great, why do we feel that the woman who tries to prise out the exact number is not our friend? Anyway, I lean the other way. The women in my family have been lying about their age for three generations.

That said, where Time has brought definite losses, the person who fits herself into her landscape, as it contracts, seems to age with more grace and less complaint.

The right balance would take in both these polarities. “Giving up” seems premature and wrong, though that’s not the same as accepting the end of a tale when it’s imminent.

A Chinese acupuncturist told me that the day of one’s death is fixed at birth, but the way one lives is not fixed. He also said, if I wanted youthful skin, I should do 300 right-handed, circular tummy rubs, with ten going from outside in, and then alternating, the next ten circular rubs going from inside out. For the extra-young effect, do it another 300x with the left hand. Wear loose clothing while doing this. His own skin looked like a baby’s bottom and he was eighty.

What’s the secret of aging? A wise, older friend told me that what I had suffered in youth meant that I would always be older than my age-mates, but would look younger. What does that mean? One has to make Time one’s friend. Socratic dialectic, which identifies one’s views so as to see when they collide with reality or with each other, makes a friend of Time. This is facing the lessons of experience square on.

So, dialectic and tummy rubs.