It is the end of summer, and it has been a while since I have posted here. My apologies to all who have been following. I have taken July and August as months to really concentrate on writing my book Aging as a Spiritual Practice and that effort has paid off. I have written many chapters and am ahead of my delivery schedule. It has been an interesting experience to write the book after blogging for over a year on this topic. “Blog to book” has become a publishing buzzword these days, and indeed many popular bloggers have transitioned to being book authors.
But my experience is that writing a book on this subject of aging is very different than blogging about it. One good thing is that I have brought in more voices—doctors, nurses, therapists, scientists, psychological researchers, and others who have expertise in various aspects of this burgeoning field of aging. I have also found that my own experience as both a cancer survivor and survivor of a near-death brain infection has proven useful in new ways (at least I hope so!). But a book on aging—particularly one like this, where I am hoping to offer something new and useful to a general audience of aging readers—is not so easy. Everyone has a different experience of their aging—of course they do, because everyone’s life experience and life history is different.
I’ve had the sense that I am writing about something that in former generations didn’t need to be read about as much as absorbed from the wider culture and community. Many traditional cultures don’t have words for things that are part of their core. I read recently that many cultures don’t have a word for music. Music is just their life; they sing together about everything.
Aging is something like that. Modern society has made us in some ways backward. We need remedial education, I think, about certain core aspects of what it means to be human. This is sobering. What kind of world have we created where we have to do this? And yet most people I talk to speak readily and enthusiastically about their experience of aging. Lots of people like being older; for them the pluses outweigh the minuses.
That is a clue to healthy aging, one backed up by a psychiatrist I am interviewing. He tells me that among his patients the one who are doing best with growing older are deeply engaged in the world. They are volunteering, they have a wide circle of friends and family, they follow the news, sports, politics, entertainment. They have avocations and hobbies, they join clubs, they study new things, learn a new language, extend themselves in new ways.
We know intuitively that community is the essence of a healthy life, and that is being borne out by what I am learning in writing the book.
Stay tuned for more thoughts!
I’m very glad to hear about the development of the book and I look forward to reading it.
And I wonder if there is any data that might suggest that people who have passed a certain age threshold are more “susceptible” to spiritual disciplines?
I would agree with the psychiatrist. At 72, I am the most content in all my years. Life is more stable. I am at ease with myself and the world at large, having the time to do what I want to do, pursue new interests, help out friends and family. There is no pressure to prove anything. Best if all, I’m still here!
Looking forward to the release of your book, Lew. It promises to be of keen interest to more than seniors!
As a therapist, my best teachers are my patients; what I observe about their aging, is that they seem to become more of a distillation of who they’ve always been; an intensity of sharpening by life’s experience to polish or dull the jewel or glass that exists.There is in our society a great turning away, a diverting one’s focus to entertainment, extraneous escapes from the truth of impending death, as it draws nearer.
Material posessions, new yellow Porsche, plastic surgery, $50,000 for dental implants; The great American way, own more, you win…..
What? Immortality?
DL
I’m a nurse, and find my open gentle side best to be in around sick dying patients, or around anyone who needs an ear to listen, including family and other staff. Each moment arises as a gift from the past, with consciousness listening to every vibration, so that the past can be healed thoroughly in mind and body now within each new form, and sound. So the topic is deep, and vastly more meaningful than I can regulate. Just being open to all, through the breath, and relaxing the body deepens being.
Thanks for your comments!
Learning to accept less than 100% -of cognition, memory, agility, energy. That is a difficult detachment. Without the acceptance that aging is as much a part of each of us as was growth, strength and that death is a positive end of the arc, we are unhappy and jealous. As a nursing home chaplain, I have the opportunity to accompany my elders at the very end of their lives. The most joyous are those who accept and enjoy.
As you say, we know intuitively that community is a fundamental for healthy life at all stages. So don’t we need to look deeper, get a little more real, and address some of the realities that arise with aging within community and may keep us from community? It can be challenging to value generational differences, and BroBob calls out some important physical conditions that can’t be overlooked.
As we lose mental capabilities how can and should our spiritual practice evolve?
The idea that “modern society has made us somewhat backward” also feels like a generalization that deserves more reflection. If you mean our contemporary Western society, could it be that it’s natural for us to apply the same thorough analysis to probe our understanding of aging that we use in treating cancer or handling climate change or developing the internet? It’s one approach we’ve found useful in expanding our understanding.
But the point about our socialized approaches seems like a distraction. Isn’t the core challenge more about accepting and staying with the experience of aging? Our experience. Community can be a support and it can also be an escape. Should we be addressing that difference in a spiritual practice of aging?
I’m 63 and find myself deeply in the grip of this subject. I’ve seen/am seeing the process of aging in the generation ahead of me. It’s not a pretty picture. I believe it needs to be taken it seriously and want to see it clearly–as clearly as I possibly can. In order to simply find my way through the decades to come.