I am uncertain whether it is a sad thing or a solace to be past change. One can improve one’s character to the very end, and no one is too young in these days to put the old right. The late clarities will be put down to our credit I feel sure.
It was something other than this that had caught my attention. In fact, it was the exact opposite. It was the comfortable number of things about which we need no longer bother. I know I am thinking two ways at once, justified and possible in a notebook. Goals and efforts of a lifetime can at last be abandoned. What a comfort. One’s conscience? Toss the fussy thing aside. Rest, rest. So much over, so much hopeless, some delight remaining.
One’s appearance, a lifetime of effort put into improving that, most of it ill judged. Only neatness is vital now, and one can finally live like a humble but watchful ghost. You need not plan holidays because you can’t take them. You are past all action, all decision. In very truth, the old are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well—there are days when emptiness is spacious and non-existence elevating. When old, one has only one’s soul as company. There are times when you can feel it crying, you do not ask why. Your eyes are dry, but heavy, hot tears drop on your heart. There is nothing to do but wait and listen to the emptiness which is sometimes gentle. You and the day are quiet, and you have no comment to make….
I don’t like to write this down, yet it is much in the minds of the old. We wonder how much older we have to become and what degree of decay we may have to endure. We keep whispering to ourselves, “Is this age yet? How far must I go?” For age can be dreaded more than death. “How many years of vacuity? To what degree of deterioration must I advance?” Some want death now as a release from old age; some say they will accept death willingly, but in a few years. I feel the solemnity of death and the possibility of some form of continuity. Death feels a friend because it will release us from the deterioration of which we cannot see the end. It is waiting for death that wears us down and the distaste for what we may become.
These thoughts are with us always, and in our hearts we know ignominy as well as dignity. We are people to whom something important is about to happen. But before then, these endless years before the end, we can summon enough merit to warrant a place for ourselves. We go into the future not knowing the answer to our question.
But we also find that as we age we are more alive than seems likely, convenient, or even bearable. Too often our problem is the fervor of life within us. My dear fellow octogenarians, how are we to carry so much life, and what are we to do with it?
Let no one say it is “unlived life” with any of the simpler psychological certitudes. No one lives all the life of which he was capable. The unlived life in each of us must be the future of humanity. When truly old, too frail to use the vigor that pulses in us, and weary, sometimes even scornful, of what can seem the pointless activity of mankind, we may sink down to some deeper level and find a new supply of life that amazes us.
All is uncharted and uncertain; we seem to lead the way into the unknown. It can feel as though all our lives we have been caught in absurdly small personalities, circumstances, and beliefs. Our accustomed shell cracks here, cracks there, and that tiresomely rigid person we supposed to be ourselves stretches, expands, and, with all inhibitions, is gone. We realize that age is neither failure nor disgrace, although mortifying we did not invent it. Age forces us to deal with idleness, emptiness, not being needed, not able to do, helplessness just ahead perhaps. All this is true, but one has had one’s life, one could be full to the brim. Yet it is the end of our procession through time, and our steps are uncertain.
Here we come to a new place of which I knew nothing. We come to where age is boring, one’s interest in it by-passed; further on, go further on, one finds that one has arrived at a larger place still, the place of release. There one says,
Age can seem a debacle, a rout of all one most needs, but that is not the whole truth. What of the part of us, the nameless, boundless part who experienced the rout, the witness who saw so much go, who remains undaunted and knows with clear conviction that there is more to us than age? Part of that which is outside age has been created by age, so there is gain as well as loss. If we have suffered defeat we are somewhere, somehow beyond the battle….
A long life makes me feel nearer truth, yet it won’t go into words, so how can I convey it? I can’t, and I want to. I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing age that it is a time of discovery. If they say, “Of what?,” I can only answer, “We must each find out for ourselves, otherwise it won’t be discovery.” I want to say, “If at the end of your life you have only yourself, it is much. Look, you will find.”
Source: The Measure of My Days by Florida Scott-Maxwell. Copyright © 1968 by Florida Scott-Maxwell. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Focus on Practice
Conscious Aging
In recent years, there has been a surge of public interest in spiritual topics especially related to development in later life. This interest in things spiritual takes different forms, ranging from an interest in exotic New Age phenomena to a revival of traditional mystical teachings from Judaism and Christianity.
Some recent research suggests that mystical experience is becoming more common, with broad implications for an aging society. For example, Jeffrey Levin (1993) looked at age differences in reports of extrasensory perception, spiritualism, and numinous experience, which he defined as being “close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself.” Using data from a representative cross-sectional population survey, Levin found that between 1973 and 1988, composite mysticism scores increased with successive age cohorts. Private and subjective religiosity is positively related to overall mystical experience, but organizational religiosity is inversely related, suggesting that those pursuing spiritual growth may find it in places other than services in a house of worship. In light of Levin’s findings, it is not surprising that large proportions of older Americans are already making use of so-called alternative therapies, including meditation, as part of their health practices (McMahan & Lutz, 2004).
Compared with European societies, the United States has historically been more religiously oriented, but spiritual revival today goes beyond mainstream religion. Individual growth is the new watchword. In keeping with that trend, one of the most fascinating developments today is the rise of conscious aging, an idea based on an assumption that late life can be a period for positive spiritual growth. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a pioneer of the Jewish Renewal movement, and Ram Dass, once a Harvard psychology professor and later a spiritual teacher, emerged as national leaders of the conscious-aging movement. Holistic health care, life review, and mystical religion are all important elements in conscious aging (Schachter-Shalomi & Miller, 1995).
A central practice of conscious aging is personal meditation (Goleman, 1988), whether it takes the form of yoga, Zen, and other Eastern disciplines or the form of contemplative prayer, which has a long history in the Christian church. Meditation as a spiritual discipline is a way of looking at ourselves as beings with depths beyond the conscious mind or ego. The same outlook permeates the work of Jungian psychiatrist Allan Chinen (1989), who has opened up new vistas for the interpretation of fairy tales about the second half of life. Conscious aging represents a coming together of religion and psychology so that each can enrich the other.
Conscious aging goes beyond conventional assumptions about adaptation or personality development over the life course. An early proponent of this view was Abraham Maslow, founder of humanistic psychology. Maslow believed that most people use only a small part of human potential, a potential demonstrated in what he called “peak experiences.” At these high points in our life, we have a chance to move toward self-actualization, that is, to become more fulfilled as human beings. Maslow himself believed that most people who are self-actualized are to be found among those who are mature in years—middle-aged or older.