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!

Life is the Ultimate Art Form

The creative act is a courageous, ancient gesture, a dynamic exploration of the dark mystery that is human existence.
                          - Adriana Diaz

A few nights ago, I had a potent dream. In it I received a sacred bundle composed of an archaic compost with wonderful regenerative powers. That archaic substance was a kind of homeopathic medicine. Even in small amounts, it enriched and rejuvenated the earth wherever it was placed.

The numinous figures that gave me that bundle told me that the archaic compost was as old as time itself. They said that it came from the deepest recesses of the richness of the Earth and was filled with all the knowing experience that had accumulated from aeons past to the present.

The archaic earth was soft, dense and dark, fragrant and of course deeply mysterious.  I took a tiny pinch of it and cast it out over the landscape, which was enhanced, enriched, beautified. Just a small pinch rejuvenated a vast territory.

Whenever I took a small pinch of the earth for healing, the delicate membrane that covered the bundle repaired itself easily. I was astounded and full of joy to have been given this gift and this responsibility, which felt so buoyant and healing for myself, the Earth and all beings.

Since that night, I have been contemplating this dream. How does it translate into my everyday life, to my creativity and my deeper purpose? I have no answers yet, but the dream has lifted me up and provided me with a reminder of the powerful nature of the subconscious mind.

The past 7 months have been very difficult. In January my younger daughter and I traveled to rescue my older daughter,  whom I have seldom seen for decades. So began a rough and consuming ride on a rocky road as we did our best to support her in dropping her long-standing addictions.  It was heartbreaking. And piercingly sweet at times. Now she is gone again. She left a week ago, returning to the city where she had been living. 

That was a gigantic effort for me, one in which I discovered deep wellsprings of love and acceptance of my daughter's very difficult life. It has also been very hard to come right up against the truth that I cannot fix my daughter's life, no matter how hard I try or how much I do. It is up to each of us to live our lives, make our choices, construct a reality that we inhabit. She has her own journey, and I pray that it goes well. My heart feels very tender these days, even raw at times. I am in a time of self-healing.

Then there is the business of selling my flower cottage, which I put on the market at the end of March. It attracted a buyer quickly, but that first sale fell through. Again, buyers quickly appeared but at the very last moment, a second sale fell through. My realtor tells me she has never seen anything like it. Well, I am happy that not too many have to go through anything similar.

I was so confident about the second deal, I  got rid of almost all my furniture and moved into a room in a friend's place.  That was a month ago. Now I've lowered the price on the cottage and we are focusing on magnetizing the right buyer and completing the sale successfully. May it  be so, and soon.

Every time I go there to water the gardens, I feel what a delightfully welcoming place it is. Somebody is going to love living there as much as I did.


Attitudes about Aging --- OLD as a Word of Power

 As you no doubt are aware, many people are afraid of aging and being old. In our culture,  there are many noxious ageist stereotypes.  People seem surprised when someone over 60 is vital, vibrant, creative, happy and capable. That's because people buy into stereotypes. Older people buy into them, too. They start to collapse into and become those stereotypes.

Well, I'm too old to do that.
That's what happens when you get older.

It's bad enough that people who are not yet old have unreal, unkind and prejudicial attitudes about aging, but when older people themselves take on those limiting beliefs and perspectives, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I may be too old to do certain things now. That could be true. But why should I focus on that, rather than on what is good, rich and enjoyable? We are all subject to the ravages of time (a phrase I happen to enjoy). I have less energy than I did 10 years ago. I cannot easily drive at night. These are age-related limitations. Others I know are grappling with chronic illness, neurological conditions, things that bring even more significant limitations. No matter what, I notice that when a person brings positive self regard, acceptance and optimism into their life situation, it benefits them and everyone around them.

Lately I've been thinking about Elaine Stritch and Rabbi Zalman Schachter, two elders who passed recently. Such different lives, but so similar in the way they poured their creative joy into everything they did. That's attitude.

And I've been thinking of Olga Kotelko, a nonagenarian athlete from Canada who passed recently. She was outstanding and passionately engaged. We don't have to be famous to be engaged, passionate, creative and joyful. We can just be ourselves fully.

I think that is good news.

OLD is a word of power. It really is. It's time to reclaim the word OLD from the junk heap of language. Be old and proud of it. Set a good example. Leave a meaningful legacy, of whatever genre or type. Don't get caught up trying to maintain the superficial facade of youthfulness. It's demeaning and it doesn't really work either. We were already young. Let's plunge into the waters of oldness. There is a lot to learn and share in this time of life.

In the midst of this world so full of conflict and war, may we find peace within ourselves and may that peace radiate out to others. 

Really Old

A night of high winds lightens into morning and after a week of contemplating the sorrow of Haiti's earthquake, I find myself looking at some images of what's really old--galaxies, planets, nebula spiraling, exploding, creating in vast space mysterious shapes that seem like fleeting dream images that made their way from the inner world to the sky.

It provides an expansive respite to gaze at these marvelous images and to rest in studying the vastness of universes, constellations of light and color that are really old, immense, and by our ordinary human standards timeless.

Now the sky lightens into early morning and the wind is buffeting the nearby trees. Another day of being here on Earth in a body. On the Earth, so in need of healing. In a body, growing old. Not really old, not with the broad vision of aeons, like the Ancient of Days, not yet. But old enough to know the transitory nature of this life, its unpredictability and its profound essential beauty.

I dreamed last night of beginning a voyage on a sailing ship. Then I woke to the journey of today, a particular Tuesday. Now it's time for my morning meditation practice, and then the work that's set out for today-- writing the final choral piece for my play, finding a musician with a synthesizer, finding a sound technician. Such finite details.

Moving these finite gestures within the embrace of the infinite. Remembering what's really old. I start the day with a prayer which includes all humans and all creatures and Nature. May all beings be happy.

Reclaiming the Word OLD

An old forest is different from a young forest. It is fuller, deeper, more complex. When we enter an old forest, we feel nourished, rejuvenated, inspired. It took a long time for that forest to mature to the point where we feel embraced so fully by it. That's oldness.

The mysterious winding paths of very old cities are satisfying to us in ways that new cities cannot be. We find in old manuscripts and statues, old brandy and old gardens a kind of pleasure and sustenance particular to oldness.

Here's something strange: an ancient redwood forest is wonderful, yet an old person is laughable. Nobody wants to be called OLD. The word OLD when used to describe an older person is as genuine a dirty word as any 4 letter word, even though OLD has only 3 letters.

Yesterday I was imagining what it would be like to create a T shirt that simply said OLD and wear it around town. After I thought about it for awhile, it seemed that the whole thing would work better as a piece of performance art, with a troupe of kindred spirits and a bit of fun choreography. I smile to imagine this happening in cities all over the country. It's quite possible and it would be quite wonderful to see that flower.

In his marvelous book The Force of Character and the Lasting Life, psychologist/scholar James Hillman takes a look at the word OLD and our ideas about oldness and old people. I love Hillman's writing and his keen and poetic mind; I highly recommend this book, which will provoke and inspire you to explore aging in new ways.

"Since 'words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind', as Virginia Woolf put it, the old mind is lowered by the lowering of "old" to its present undesirable condition: old maid, old fashioned, old guard, old boys, old witch, old fogey, old fart," Hillman writes.

The word old, he points out, is itself a very old word, deriving from an Indo-European root that means "to nourish." Oldness nourishes. We know that. As older people, we know the ways in which an old forest is different from a young forest.

It seems to me a very good idea to reclaim the word OLD. Personally I don't want to be describing myself as 70 years young, if I have the fortune to live to 70. Which of course I hope to do. I was young already. Why would I want to settle for being called 70 years young, the description of an earlier stage of life, which does not take into account everything I have thrown into the alchemical retort over the years?

When did you know you were old? one of my friends asked me the other day. It reminded me of how for many years I was uncomfortable about being a woman in a male-oriented culture. I wanted to be masculine, which I identified with successful. So I am quite familiar with the sense of not being the highly accepted one. It was a struggle to find and accept myself, to understand the unique and valuable qualities of being a woman, a particular woman, and to let go of trying to be one of the guys. I did that and at this point I don't need to do it again, in terms of trying to imitate youth. I was young already. Young people have not yet experienced being old. They still have that to live into.

It's only recently I feel comfortable with being old. I knew I was old when I felt comfortable with it. I acknowledge and value where I am now. I'm an activist of OLD these days. I'm coming from the OLD days, singing the OLD songs. Reclaiming OLD.