In Praise of Oldness: Longevity, Vitality and the Fulfillment of Meaning

Since I returned to Oregon from Mexico in early March, I have plunged back into the creative development of Sage's Play, and in the process of that, I have naturally found myself immersed in contemplating and considering our culture's perspective on oldness, aging and elders.

Desmond Tutu dances at the Dalai Lama's birthday party

"Why does our society believe old people need help?" asks author James Hillman. "They are the ones who would be, in some other society, passing on help to others: teaching skills, telling stories, leading rituals, caring for children. They have a contribution to make, and instead they are segregated as sick people who need to be nursed. This is ridiculous."

With all this I wholeheartedly agree.

When I am sitting here with my Sage's Play hat on, and my Sage's Play glasses on, I am often inspired to sing praises to oldness, to its value, richness, depth, and the essential resonance of oldness, which we find so powerful and comforting. Oldness, staying power, lasting, the accumulated pile of life experience, of knowing, caring, leading, setting a good example, keeping the faith, passing on the old stories, showing how to plant the seeds and cultivate the garden of this life.

Maya Angelou

As I have said before, I believe it would do us all good to create an Elder Hall of Fame!  I have a list of many people I have been collecting and all of them are worthy candidates. Of course there's the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, both of whom are great examples of sages at play.

And poets Maya Angelou and Stanley Kunitz. Comedian Betty White, along with Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Pablo Casals, Pablo Picasso, Bernie Sanders, Tao-Porchon Lynch, teaching yoga in her 90s,  Robert Redford, Leonard Cohen, Jane Goodall, among others. Because I am interested in art, many of the elders I chose are artists of one sort or another.  Who would you want to add to the Elder Hall of Fame if there was one and you were on the panel?

Perhaps you might find it useful, as I have, to take a long look at the old people you admire. What is it that you find most fascinating or touching about them? What kind of oldness do you want to embody? What qualities do you want to continue to cultivate in yourself as you age?

Twyla Tharp

This morning, I listened to a great talk by Ashton Applewhite, a pro-aging activist based in NYC whose work I admire and support. In her talk, Ashton discusses prevalent stereotypes about aging and how they impact older adults and society at large. Because let's face it, not all older people are as clear in their life mission and work as are those I am mentioning here. Many elders find it difficult to push through the age prejudice in our society to contribute their valuable skills and knowledge.

Age discrimination and prejudice are bad for our health and the health of our world. It's as simple as that. You can watch Ashton Applewhite's incisive, information-packed talk on ageism here. I highly recommend it....you can also take a look at her website This Chair Rocks.

Incidentally, I post a lot of great articles and observations about aging on the Sage's Play Facebook page.

Well, that's a collection of links for you to explore...and here is one more,  just for good measure. Have you taken a look at our revamped Sage's Play website? There are some delightful changes and additions you might like to see.

Right now, I am revising Your Audacious Aging Kit and  developing a new e-course titled Into the Mystery: The Healing Power of Memoir and Life Review. I feel rejuvenated and filled with fresh inspiration from my sojourn in Mexico. Stay tuned...and enjoy the magic of the approaching full moon!

The Fulfillment of Character

"Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character."
--James Hillman

If you have been reading my musings for awhile, you know how fond I am of James Hillman's writings on aging contained in his wonderful book The Force of Character and the Lasting Life.

Character is described as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, the particular attributes, traits or abilities that a person develops. The word "character" is derived from the Ancient Greek word "charaktêr", referring to a mark impressed upon a coin. Later it came to mean a point by which one thing was told apart from others. It does take time to develop one's character and to engage it fully. While some people fulfill their life expression early, for many of us it takes what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls "the gathering of years" for our particular genius to come to fullness. I often think of the many older people who contributed so richly in their later years, engaging their accumulated character in very creative ways. Frank Lloyd Wright. Anna Halprin, Arthur Rubenstein. Albert Einstein. Ethel Barrymore, Imogen Cunningham, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, to name just a few names we recognize. These and many others who have lived long enough to develop their character also sometimes "become characters" displaying themselves in a unique way, because they are free from the confines of convention, the trammels of commerce or the concerns of fashion.

That gorgeous image of the rainbow-radiant clouds in the high mountains is for me a visual picture of the real fulfillment of character. It is astoundingly beautiful and not really of this world somehow, but a liminal image, connecting the earthly with the divine.

Beings who have given themselves up into a radiance of character deeply provide great light to all of us. I think of Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama. My own growth and development has been supported and influence by the Tibetan masters I began to meet when I was in my early 30s. It's impossible to imagine what my life would have been had I not begun to encounter, study and meditate with them. I was fortunate to help found Tashi Choling, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in 1978. Those early years were heady and full of levels and dimensions of instruction that continues to resonate.


Buddhists are not prosleytizers and in fact I usually keep my spiritual life rather private because it is a very intimate and important aspect of my life.

Yet how can I not recognize and acknowledge the tremendous impact that my root teacher Gyatrul Rinpoche and the other great masters I've met have had on me? I admire them so deeply. I want to mature into that level of refinement, compassion, vision, insight and lovingkindness. That to me is the most marvelous manifestation of innate creativity. Over the years, my Tibetan teachers have given me the gifts of their presence, their rarified understanding and their great kindness. They have been and are wonderful mentors for me as I continue to work on developing and fulfilling my character.

I am entering into my 71st year next week, and I sit here regarding the alchemical work that remains to be done. Is this work ever done, this work of distilling, purifying, transforming the lead into gold? Yes, I imagine that it is done one day.

Meanwhile, I swim along here in this river of existence, floating sometimes, smelling the flowers, tasting the water, looking up at the vast sky. Sometimes I'm just minding my own business perfectly comfortably, when life turns up the heat, reminding me of The Work. This blessed Work in every breath.


“We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Seven decades. Amazing.