Some people say that old age is for the lucky ones because not everyone has the privilege of getting old.
It’s also not for the faint of heart as the changes in how we look, feel, and what we can do can be difficult to accept. I was speaking to my partner, who is in his late 60’s, and he was a bit down, saying that his most productive years were behind him now. But I disagree. His most productive years are ahead of him, but they will be of a very different type of “productivity”.
What we used to get and still need from our elders, crones, and seniors is their deepening into life. To give up the life of doing and to live the life of being, not just for themselves but for all of us, and to be role models for how to navigate this next — some say final — phase of life.
But instead what we’ve done to our elders is rob them of this role by medicating them, locking them away in homes, and devaluing them. We’re also selling them an industry worth of products and services that demand they continue to perform and do to “stay young”. Not only does this take something valuable from them, but it also robs us of their valuable presence.
From the first moment of life, our elders have been our guides. For this last stage of life too, yes we take care of our elders’ physical needs, but by slowing down and cultivating depth, our elders model what is required of us during this final phase, after all the doing is done.
Poet Robert Bly wrote in Iron John that sons used to learn by being around their dads when they worked at home. It was like a body-to-body transmission of energy teaching them what work was like. But then men started going to offices and children lost this thread. Same for learning how to age.
When we remove our elders from view, we lose this body-to-body transmission of an energetic truth about how to walk down the mountain and instead, we have to read books about how to navigate death and dying.
Again, another industry thrives as our natural teachers are removed from us. Until we value our elders — and they value the importance of this crucial phase of life — and re-integrate them back into our lives, we’re lost and forced to navigate this final step on our own.
But how do we deepen?
It starts with slowing down. It’s easy to keep pushing ourselves, refusing to accept doing less. The words of poet Rob Bell in his poem, Walk Don’t Run, say it best.
That’s the invitation for every one of us today,
and everyday, in every conversation, interaction,
event, and moment: to walk, not run. And in doing so,
to see a whole world right here within this one.
Isn’t that what deepening into the moment means? To drop below the surface, to connect to something larger than this task, to see the larger web that we are a part of, and to add something to it by just showing up and being part of it.
In fact, we don’t have to wait until we’re older to do that.
How about today, just walk, don’t run.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Danie Franco on Unsplash
