Losing Power
English 101
Professor Teddy Chocos
Ha Tran
Losing Power
Power is the most important method in order to maintain one’s life. Power is the ability
of capability to do something. It helps people to reach their goal. In society, having power means
that you are able to keep your own motivation, make your own decisions, have your own
identity, be able to financialy be independent and stay healthy. The more power a person has, the
more potential she or he has to be successful in life. However, it is impossible for someone to
keep their power forever. Aging and losing power is a stage of life. When people get old, they
lose their power. They lost their careers, their health and their motivation. Some of them lose it at
a stage very late time in life. But some of them lose it in their early middle life. The two main
reasons of why elders lose their power very early mostly because they lose their career and
health. Furthermore, the reasons they may lose their power also comes from within themselves
and the society.
When a person grows old, their option is limited. They start to lose what they have earlier
in life such as their career and their health. It doesn’t matter how their abilities or skills are to
work, at the retirement age, some are forced to stop working by the society or by their bosses,
depends on their job position. According to Matthew A. Rarey, a writer from Insight magazine,
in issue July 26, 1999, he wrote in an article call “Age before beauty”. The article contains
information about the career of old actor and actress in order to raise an argument that a lot of
actors or actress is forced to retire by the society. In the article, he mentioned that: “Actresses in
sitcoms and commercials are particularly vulnerable, since most don’t enjoy name recognition.
Indeed, woman age 45 to 64 are featured in 5 percent of all time - prime TV shows, although
they constitute 19 percent of the population, according to a study by Actresses Work”. Firstly,
these numbers show us the imbalance in the industry: some people get to keep their positions
until they are ready to retire, some people are forced out of the job. Secondly, it also tell the fact
that society doesn’t want to see them on the TV, they don’t want to see the aging faces on the
TV. For these reasons, they accidently isolated them with the rest of their younger generation
communities – the Actor/ Actresses communities. This does not only limited the elderly’s option,
the society also criticizes their age. Based on the advertisement and magazine we read in class,
the society doesn’t concern elderly as a consumer group for selling product. They rarely have the
image of an elderly in the advertisement or the image of an elderly using their products. As a
consequence, old actor and actresses can end up feeling unwanted and offended as well as
deprived because they lost what they have earlier in their life – the society’s attention. For these
reasons, we can see that people don’t consider an actor/ actress’s ability to play a role, but only
care about age, which shows how foolish the society is for judging a person based on their
appearances. Moreover, this represents society’s stereotype: Old people do not have a purpose in
the work place as young people do, they only slow down the industry if they get to work.
When a person has a disease that leads them to death, it is not only because the disease
kills them but also because of the body immunization system isn’t strong enough to stay alive. It
is the same with elderly’s career and the society. The reason why they lost their career is not only
the lacking affection from the society, but also from themselves. For some old people, they suffer
from their health problem prevented their physical ability, some of them just want to relax until
they die. Or they might suffer from some traumatic that make them don’t want to live anymore.
Based on the movie “UP” by Pixar Animation Studios, released in May 29, 2009, through the
stories of “Carl and Ellie”, we can see how sad and miserable Carl is when he has to spend his
old age living alone after Ellies’ death. Even though that this story is not real, but it’s still giving
us a much better understand and visual about the elderly’s traumatic if they end up living alone
for the rest of their life. The solution for this phenomenon is for the eldelry to stay on track.
There are some elders still moving on with their life and keep working even they are not
welcomed by the society. They destroy the stereotype thought about the elder by staying young
and strong. For example, Sylvester Stallone (67 years old) and Jackie Chan (60 years old),
they’re both action actors in their old era but still look very young and very strong. Moreover,
some of them change their fields of working in order to maintain their job. For instance, Morgan
Freeman (76 years old), he is a well-known actor who plays every role in a lot of movies. He
started to play a lot of roles since he gets older, this help him to keep his job even though that he
is very old now. Not only man, but women also can keep their job when they are old consider the
following of the singer Madonna (55 years old) who is still looking young and beautiful.
Losing career is not the only method that makes elderly lose their power but losing health
also prevent them to keep their ability. Viet Nam has a famous idiom saying that: “People who
have health have a hundred desires, but people who doesn’t have only one desire: health”. People
won’t live by money, they will live if they area healthy. Without health, your capable to do
something is limited. It could be physical health and mental health. In the past, if a person’s
lifespan is only about 50 years old, now a person’s lifespan could be able to extend to 90 years
old. With all the societal medical support, high quality of foods and nuitritions and science
develop, we now are able to have a second life which is about 40 years more than the past.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics in 2011, we have the number: “In the
United States, more than half of adults over 65 years old take at least three to four medications
daily to treat chronic conditions and age-related changes in physical and emotional health.”. This
can show us how important the medical support is to the elderly community, they most likely
rely on medication. Furthermore, they might end up dying if they don’t receive any medical care.
A research from Werheimer & Stantella in the year 2003 proved this statement: “Estimated 5075% of all adults do not take medications properly, resulting in more than 125,000 deaths each
year.”. For these reasons, it is undoubtedly that the societal medical support did a wonderful job
to help us physically: more cure to kill disease, more method to expand the lifespan, giving the
elderly more incentive when they go to the medical center. By expanding the lifespan, the
society helps elderly to have more time to keep their ability of capability to do something. This
shows that the society is not only taking elderly power away but it also helps elderly to keep their
power.
However, even though that the society had done massive support to help the eldery
physically, it have a very bad performance on mental care. They concentrate less on mental care
than physical care, the patients are usually not given the right to choose or say their opinion
because they are considered not having abilities to think. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, founder of the
hospice care movement the the United States and ran Shanti Nilaya, in her writing “On the Fear
of Death”, wrote: “Maybe the question has to be raised: Are we becoming less human or more
human? … It is clear that whatever the answer may be, the patient is suffering more – not
physically, perhaps, but emotionally” (443). Due to the improvement of the technology, People
don’t have to suffer in physically unlike the past. It should make people less saferthan before.
However, Elisabeth mentioned it is obvious that people are under pain badly in emotionally. It is
because the way to cure people has changed. In the Past, people care patients in a more human
way. For example, in the past, Family or friends stayed beside of patients and take care of
them. The people surrounding the patient tried to make them comfortable not only physically,
but also emotionally. However, nowadays, patients just go to the hospital. Family or friends, who
give emotional care, don’t stay beside of them all day because instead of them, there are doctors
and nurses, who just check the patients’ physical status. It makes patients feel being treated
without sincere car, which brings psychological matters.
The culprit stays behind the reason why the elderly lose their health is not only the
society but the elderly themselves also play a huge part on it. Some of the elderly didn’t work
and exercise or eat correctly to remain healthy. Some of them refuse to rehab after healing from
their physical injuries. But the most important reason why elderly lose their health when they
grow old is because they threw away their health when they were young. According to my
interview of the University of Massachussetts Boston OLLI, a lot of them did dangerous things
that end up with injured forever, such as the Viet Nam War or World War II. Some of them
smoke at the same time drinking when they are young and end up with throat, lung and liver
problems. Or someone they sacrifice their health in order to achieve something. For instance, in
the reading “The Company Man”, written by Ellen Goodman, Phil – the main character works
himself to death because he is a workaholic and want to be financial success.
In total, power is undoubtedly the most important method to maintain one’s life and
aging and losing power is a stage of life. The more a person grows older, the less power they
have. The huge reason making a person lose their power is because of the society. They forced
people to stop working when they are old, treat them badly when they are old. However,
according to Alice Walker, an American author and activist, have a statement: “The most
common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”. The elderly
themselves play an important part of losing power. By not fight back to the society, as well as
giving up their identity, the elderly’s power can be easily taken away. We should encourage the
elderly to fight their disease, fight their aging in order to keep their power. Because after all, no
one can take away your power but yourself.
Biliography
A.Rarey Matthew, “Age before beauty?”, Insight Magazine, Issue July 26, 1999.
Ellen Goodman, The Company Man” 1995.
Kubler-Ross Elisabeth, “On the Fear of Death”, “On Death and dying” ,1969.
National Center for Health statistics. (2011). Health, United States, 2010: With special feature on
Death and dying. Hyattsville, MD: Author, 2011.
Pixar Animation Studio, Movie UP, 2009.
Wertheimer, A., Santella, T. (2003). Medication compliance research: Still so far to go. Journal
of Applied Research, 3, 1-9, 2003.