A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.
Virginia Woolf
Whether we realize it or not, most of us hold the view that, in our aging and dying, we are trying to make the best of a bad situation. This deeply ingrained view is based on our current widespread cultural belief that “Old Is Bad.” Please know that this point of view is a self-fulfilling prophecy and it is toxic.
Not just toxic. This is an ageist point of view — prejudice based on one’s older years. Ageism is insidious, both culturally and internally within each of us.
A popular saying represents this world view: “There’s always some bumps in the road of life.”
As I’ve written here before, are they really bumps in the road? Actually, the road is just what it is. People-made roads are smooth and straight, but life and death are not people-made roads. They are perfectly imperfect journeys.
We fear and deny the inevitable — our aging and our mortality. As Maria Popova (brainpickings.org) writes, “This may be the most elemental paradox of existence: We yearn for permanence and stability, despite a universe of constant change, as a way of hedging against the inescapable fact of our mortality, our own individual impermanence. And yet this faulty coping mechanism results not in immortality but in complacency, stagnation, a living death.”
Even in our brokenness we are not broken. All existence, including our aging and dying, is perfectly imperfect.
Herein is the difference between self-compassion and embracing — the difference between feeling “broken” while still loving yourself versus knowing you’re not broken.
This helps us understand that in our aging and dying we are not just trying to make the best of a bad situation, but instead we are living fully, passionately, appreciatively and imperfectly all the way through to the end.
Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations, writes, “Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us to discover what matters most.”
At A Tribe Called Aging, our slogan is “Life More Wonderful, Not Just Less Horrible.”
As the Jefferson Airplane sang over 50 years ago in “Crown of Creation”:
Life is change
How it differs from the rocks …
New worlds to gain
My life is to survive
And be alive.
n Marc Blesoff is a former Oak Park village trustee, co-founder of the Windmills softball organization, co-creator of Sunday Night Dinner, a retired criminal defense attorney, and a novice beekeeper. He currently facilitates Conscious Aging Workshops and Wise Aging Workshops in the Chicago area.
