It’s Us, Not Them

A colleague sent me an article titled “The City Looks Different When You’re Older.” She called it “interesting,” and it was: an interesting example of language that presents aging as something other people do.

It started right in the second sentence, where the author explained that many obstacles make “our towns and cities” difficult “for them as they age” [emphasis mine].

The problem is, those third-person pronouns keep people from taking a first-person interest in solutions.

Here’s an exercise: When tempted to write “as they age,” change that to “as we age.”

After all, every day, we do.

Photo by San Fermin Pamplona on Pexels