Let’s define the word ‘contemporaneous’. According to Mr Webster, it means existing or happening during the same period of time.
A good application of this word is my historical fact. I am a ‘contemporary’ of Michael Jackson and Madonna and my youth is ‘contemporaneous’ with disco fever, flairs and gabardine pants. But can I also be ‘contemporaneous’ to my own self?
To be contemporaneous to one’s self is to acknowledge one’s historical time. This does not mean that one has to live according to the era in which one was born, but rather according to one’s chronological age.
Those in my age group can be contemporaneous by dressing and behaving appropriate for middle-aged people. We should never dress up in the 70s fashion, lest we be accused of being caught in a time warp. Neither should we garb ourselves in the get-up of teenagers nowadays. People might think we are refusing to grow up. Instead we should dress like mature people.
There are many options for what to wear so I’ll just mention some of the don’ts. For 50+ women, it is best to stop wearing the tiniest of skirts, and ditch those Madonna shorts that show some fleshy bits of your behind.
For our male counterpart, you can retire those tight-fitting jeans and leather pants unless you are attending a halloween costume party.
More important than being contemporaneous in outward appearance is to have age-compatible behaviour.
Gone should be the shrieks or gushings of our teens which deserve to stay in our teens. Age should have mellowed us. Neither should we act thoughtlessly or on impulse, if this can be avoided. These failings are the follies of youth. People our age should by now have learned temperance from our life experiences.
Let us try to conduct ourselves always with dignity and patience. These are the ways of an older and wiser person. Those who adopt the posture and habits of the young are only making caricatures of themselves.
My friend Bert is a man in his 50s. Being a musician, he hangs around mostly with artists and younger people who appreciate his band’s music.
Young people feel at ease with him because he speaks their language. Bert not only acquired their speech, he also dresses like them. He finds this kind of immersion valuable to his art. What he cannot tolerate is when the young seem to forget the age difference between them and break the code of respect that ought to be accorded to people of Bert’s age.
In one disagreement with a younger guy, he was challenged to a fistfight. Another young person spoke to him with disrespect on the social network. Bert is too mild-mannered and courteous to be given this kind of treatment. He now wonders if these young-sters have forgotten the fact that he is not one of them, but someone old enough to be their father? What Bert has failed to do is to be contemporaneous to himself. His youthful language and get-up have blurred the age divide. He got lost in the crowd of young people.
This is not so bad if this happens to be his goal, but if he wants to be treated like an older person, then it’s to abandon the youth speak and act his age. It helps to heed this wise French maxim: ‘Il faut etre de son temps’. Simply put: One has to be of one’s (chronological) time.