Mysteries of male elderhood: testosterone, presence and purpose.

When I turned sixty in 2008, I set a clear intent of moving into elderhood, growing beyond my prevailing warrior-hero approach to life. Six years on, I can report good progress but further mysteries.

For most of my adult life, I have been a happy workaholic: drawn to situations where I had lots of challenge and responsibility, working in a state of high adrenaline which gave purpose and structure to my life, and paved over the murky depths beneath.

All this has been dissolving and under scrutiny since I turned 50. I have made numerous descents into the murky depths, sometimes just falling in, sometimes an orderly visit properly equipped with a therapist. I aim to be friends with the early wounds and neurotic habits which still thrash around in those depths: I don’t believe they ever disappear, but an elder has their measure.

Film 'Waste Land' : Learning resilience from the bottom of the heap

This film is about rubbish pickers in Brazil, at the largest landfill site in the world.  You may not be surprised to know that the pickers are the bottom of the heap in social position: many hide the work they do even from their families.

Waste Land depicts a project by Vic Muniz, an internationally famous photographer and artist from poor origins in Brazil, now living in the US.  He spends a year working with some of these pickers, creating art from blown-up photos of the pickers, embellished with the very rubbish they pick.

Essentially the pickers are paid by private companies to sift through mountains of smelly rubbish and pick out materials that can be recycled.  We soon realise that the pickers understand the environmental value of the work they are doing.

Through the film you get a touching sense that the pickers, over 2500 of them, have evolved a resilient and supportive community in this physically hellish setting.  One man tells how he nearly died when the tailgate fell off a garbage truck, and thirty fellow-pickers gave blood to save his life.

Despite a lot of scepticism, the pickers formed a co-operative which has successfully campaigned to improve their conditions, and stop children doing this work.  They have even set up a library, stocked by books found in the rubbish.

Although the pickers know they are looked down on by society, they are proud of what they do.  Several point out that it’s an honest, positive way to earn a living, unlike the drug dealing and prostitution which are rife in the favelas (shanty towns) where they live.

This tip could easily be a scene of competition, as pickers vie for the rubbish that has value.  Yet the film gives a strong sense that the pickers look out for each other, share the spoils, and have a sense of order in a setting that is so hideous it could provoke anarchy and desperation.

If people at the bottom of the heap can be so cheerful and resilient, surely the rest of us can learn from this?