Fierce with Age Archives, Vol. 4
Wisdom from Wayshowers
Welcome to this edition of the Fierce with Age Archives, featuring a combination of new inspiration as well as classics drawn from over 1000 entries gathered by a team of contributors over 15 years.
For the complete collection of best-of-the year-editions, click HERE.
EVOLVING THE FUTURE
In my 50’s, at the beginning of my spiritual journey through age, I dreaded the future. In my 60’s, with 10 years of spiritual practice under my belt, my feelings about the future evolved. Taking a page from the mystics, I gradually became more curious than afraid. In place of dreading the future, I faced it as an adventure. And here I remained until this week, when visiting with my sister-in-law Sue. Close to 10 years older, wiser and fiercer she has always lit the path ahead, through the loss of parents, renegotiating relationships with adult children and facing a growing list of maladies and procedures. But looking ahead to 85, I know that aging raises the stakes yet higher and I found myself yet again seeking answers.
“So, Sue,” I began. “At 85, how do you feel about the future now?” Without missing a beat, she replied “Oh honey. It’s been a long time since I’ve feared what’s to come, or felt the need for courage. The future, for me, it’s magical.” Her response literally took my breath away. The future, she was showing me, is what we make of it here and now. Even while implementing adjustments and sensible plans, we live all of our life—even our feelings about the future—in the present moment. If what you really want is the possibility of living a magical future, why not do it now?
—Carol Orsborn, inspired by Sue Stein
“This much is certain and clear: I want a successful old age. My quest is to find the always elusive still point, the eye of the storm, the peace that bypasses the brain, thoughts, conflict, striving, where the heart, content and hopeful, is at rest…I want to fashion who I want to become, live as I want to live, with ease, in my dusking years. I want easy, ah, easy! The very flower of my desiring!...
Unhappiness, depression, discontent is the call to this adventure. The moaning of our souls is a reminder of something more important than our repetitive lives. We have to begin with openness to new ways of being, of seeing, of making nano inner gestures towards light. It is a daily, hourly practice. The call is the call of the inner frontier. It demands nothing less than total commitment, dedication, devotion.”
--Kamla Kapur, The Privilege of Aging: Savoring the Fullness of Life
“I find myself in a retiring kind of mood. Which has surprised me a bit, though it seems quite natural. Retiring in the sense of letting go of some projects, the push to accomplish. Our society encourages us to continue in that continuous accomplishment style, even as we age…It’s an overcompensation for the way our society denigrates aging–so elders are pushing to prove we are still viable, capable, worthy of notice…
People will give you a lot of encouragement for doing things they consider risky or adventurous, like fitting out a gypsy wagon and wandering here and there with a one-woman show—stuff like that, things they might never do themselves. I’m sure some elders will carry on that tradition, and here’s to them and their vividness. To me, the real adventure is within.”
–Gaea Yudron, Sages Play
“Regret, one of the ghosts of aging, comes upon us one day dressed up like wisdom, looking profound and serious, sensible and responsible…Regret claims to be insight. But how can it be spiritual insight to deny the good for the sake of what was not? No, regret is not insight. It is a sand trap of the soul.
The fact is that the twinges of regret are a step-over point in life. They remind us of the people we loved, the sense of directions that drove us…It is the choices in the past that we made in the past that have brought us to be the person we are today…It urges us to continue becoming.”
–Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully
WOBBLING BEYOND MIDLIFE
“This may be the hardest part of passing from older middle age into true old age: the acceptance of limits, the paring down to essentials. I now think I know what the Talmud means when it says, ‘You are not obliged to finish the work, but neither are you permitted to desist from it.’ …
My steps may have wobbled on the way to older age, but now that I have crossed the threshold my walk is growing stronger and my heart beats with something akin to a teenager’s anticipation of all that still lies ahead…Not for me will there be skydiving at age 75 or a half-marathon at 80. I will be content with what Wallace Stevens called ‘the pleasures of merely circulating.’
Such pleasures, in the movement of the spirit, will be enough. They will be more than enough. I wish for myself and for all who are growing older release from fear and anxiety so that we can fully receive the valedictory gifts of vision and completion.”
–Peter Laarman “Among School Children”, from Reflections: Yale Divinity School’s “Test of Time: The Art of Aging”
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