Less has become an unavoidable horizon in the time of COVID. Whatever our age, the plague we have been suffering from carries the ambient threat of either less life (sudden onset of illness, with who knows what consequences) or no life: our life not just upended, but ended. This general picture comes to resemble, oddly, the “down-sized” one that retirees have learned to live with, a life marked by less. Curiously, too, this condition provides an ironic perspective on the foundational premise of the American Dream: the expectation of more and better.
More than 400 years ago, the Puritans came to these shores wanting more room and better conditions to thrive in than their homeland permitted. For two and a half centuries, the siren call of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—exerted an irresistible appeal. And even though there is now a growing fear that the dream may be playing out, the American expectation of more and better to come, assumed as virtually a birthright, feels too deep to relinquish.
Against the grain of such assumptions, what does life look like, seen through the lens of less? And who better to serve as guides in this exploration than us, the elderly? After all, we’ve been mapping this cramped terrain for some time now.