growth and learning aren’t part of the rec-
ipe for success. “It not only tells them they
don’t have time to grow, it saps them of the
motivation to grow,” Dweck says.
Even Swift, now staring down the Big
3-0, recognized that her darling days were
numbered. “I just struggle to find a woman
in music who hasn’t been completely
picked apart by the media, or scrutinized
and criticized for aging, or criticized for
fighting aging,” she said. “It just seems to
be much more difficult to be a woman in
music and to grow older.”
When politicians proclaim that “young
people are the future,” they mean we’ll in-
herit mountains of debt and a destroyed en-
vironment. But when young people think
about our own futures, we should look at
the way middle-aged and older people are
treated—like it or not, that’s going to be
us one day. If young people were really so
smart, we wouldn’t forget that. •