When Stories Become Stereotypes

When we characterize ourselves or others strictly based on age, we build walls that block real communication.

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As a writer and educator on aging issues, I tend to get insightful ideas from everyday images, which I then share with others. This usually happens when I’m doing everyday things, such as taking a walk.

A case in point: In the wet, temperate winters where I live, it’s common to see moss growing everywhere: on tree trunks, between sidewalk cracks, and along the lower parts of concrete buildings. One of my favorite walking routes takes me past a range of stone walls haphazardly lined with cascading green. Recently for some reason, that familiar scene caught my eye in a different way. Cue insight.

I’m not alone in this behavior. No matter who we are, where we live, and whatever culture we come from, we are born with an instinctive need to make sense of anything we experience. We’re hardwired to do so. As historian John Dominic Crossan says, “Humans are meaning-seeking animals. We pursue meaning the way heat-seeking missiles hunt exhaust.”

That pursuit is obvious when we communicate using music, dance, visual art, and words –– especially words in the form of storytelling, since stories permeate many of our daily interactions.

Think about it: How many stories do you hear and tell in the course of a day? You might listen to the news as you get ready for work; go over the day’s plans with your family at the breakfast table; trade comments with friends, neighbors, and coworkers about last night’s game or latest episode of the dramatic series you’ve been watching; and review the day’s events with your family at dinnertime. Depending on circumstances, you and others explain injuries to doctors, testify in court, convince people to buy products, and reveal concerns to therapists. Oh, and at night you dream. That’s storytelling, too.

There’s another thing all of us humans do: We age. And true to our nature, we’re compelled to tell stories about that as well. But what kinds are we telling?

Here’s the basic storyline in our culture: “Aging is a process solely of deterioration and decline.” We think that’s the whole tale, but it’s not. In fact, deterioration and decline make up at most only a part of what it means to live into our later years. There’s plenty of growth involved, if we’re open to it.

There’s a reason why many of us are blind to the positive aspects of getting older: We live in a society that doesn’t support, let alone highlight, them. Our culture neatly categorizes the process of aging as bad and labels its negative image as “reality.”

Which brings me to the question of categorizing. That behavior in itself isn’t a bad thing; in fact, you might say it’s one of those heat-seeking missiles of meaning that make us human. It’s an effective cognitive skill we use all the time.

For example, suppose we see two particular animals playing together. Our brains’ analytical left hemisphere tells us, “That’s a cocker spaniel and a bulldog.” Our brains’ integrative right hemisphere says, “Those are two dogs.” Clearly both ways of categorizing help us understand and communicate our experience of reality.

Where we go wrong is when we falsely categorize something, and in doing so, turn it into a stereotype, which then becomes a character in our stories. Such false categorization involves committing two types of errors:

We make an error of quantity when we assume the extremes about how often something is done or how many people are doing it. For example, behind the age-based statements “Young people are self-absorbed” and “Old people can’t handle technology” is an assumption of all or none. To disprove either assertion, we only have to find one exception. The contradiction gets even stronger, the more exceptions we find.

The second type of error is just as important: the error of intent. Why would anyone need to stereotype generations at all? Instead of classifying for accuracy, might there be another motive? Someone –– whether young or old –– who believes in the cultural  deteriorate-and-decline aging story might not want to self-identify as old. And stereotyping is a handy way to create an “us vs. them” tribal paradigm. We build barriers that hold us back from appreciating our own organic potential and that of others.

Here’s the real irony about stereotyping others who are younger or older: Chances are great that we all know people who are exceptions to any behavioral category we may assume is the norm. And if we know exceptions, many, many others do as well. Those exceptions multiply until “all” and “none” become meaningless terms.

Only when we recognize this absurdity will we be able to communicate more authentically, grow and thrive more completely as individuals, and tell truer stories with greater confidence. We would become like the moss that insistently breaks through, cascading beyond the cracks of walls that divide us.

And that was the insight I got during my walk. My heat-seeking missile of meaning.

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