“Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.” (Betty Friedan)
Life happens. The day has come that I am officially a Senior Citizen. While I’m looking forward to receiving my monthly pension cheques and all the other discounts and perks that come with my senior status, this post contains some of my observations over sixty-five years.
Sixty-five years is a long life. From the moment we’re born, the process of learning how to live in this world starts. We learn from our caregivers what are the social and cultural mores we are expected to live up to. Each and everyone of them does the best job they can to impact our positive growth and development. By the time one arrives at age 65, it’s alright to admit to oneself, if not to everybody else, that all these well-meaning and trusted souls were imperfect themselves. This means that I can’t be anywhere near perfect or any kind of saint. In our human nature, there are flaws. “Thinking well is the greatest excellence and wisdom: to act and speak what is true, perceiving things according to their nature.” (Herakleitos)
All the concepts and ideas we carry about peace, love, charity, temperance and other virtues are ideals that we as human beings struggle to live up to. All the wisdom traditions talk and teach about these qualities and we are indeed fortunate if we can live up to some of them. It is my experience that in all cultures and sub-cultures globally, there are humans who act skilfully and those who act unskilfully. Because we’re learning as we go along, we can’t pretend to know how, for example, world peace will come about. I don’t know when it will be a reality either. When I was a teenager, I thought it would be achieved but at sixty-five, I’m not so sure. “It’s a commonplace that wisdom is not the accumulation of information or data in the current sense of those words. Wisdom isn’t just knowing more. …….for knowledge, add, for wisdom, take away. (Charles Wright)
Life is a mystery in all ways. There’s the mystery of being born and the mystery of dying. We become preoccupied for a great many years of our lives with dying. From many authoritative sources, we get the concept that it is unnatural – something to overcome.
There’s great fear in death. We have to know where we’re going after this life. This can’t be the end. At sixty-five, I am daily evolving to a comfort level of not knowing. I’m finding that it’s becoming easier to be fine with the concept of life as mystery. Not so long ago, I myself was going to a place called heaven where I would live eternally. Now, it’s easier to say that I don’t know the answer to this mystery and I don’t have to know.
In all the quotes here, the word “wisdom” has been used. Although I’m not sure if people sixty-five and older have acquired wisdom as a result of aging, there are definitely all kinds of changes that take place. What we spent years getting to know and were very sure that we knew sometimes all has to go. We aren’t specializing in anything anymore – there’s no need to. “The wise, so the picture goes, understand things: and they see how it might be different. Their compassion is genuine but not highly demonstrative, and can manifest itself in odd ways. The wise are good at letting go.” (Lao Zi)
These are personal reflections on my turning sixty-five and a way to mark the occasion for myself. It is my hope that “wisdom” will transpire and I will evolve on my own journey and you on yours as well. Au Revoir!
