Growing...Older

   There is no denying or slowing the fact of growing older, a trait that seems to grow quicker by the year.  One comedian said simply that this was only our perception, a complacency of not finding the new;  he mentions how time went on forever when one was a child, when mornings couldn't come quick enough and the days lasted forever, when everything was a new discovery.  But he said that as we grow older, we begin to simply accept the everyday, the seasons changing, the birthdays arriving, the leaves turning.  We delay the newness, if we see it at all, going further and further into our travels or reading or watching.

   This is all the subject of the best-selling French book, The Warmth of the Heart Prevents Your Body From Rusting by Marie de Hennezel.  Here is how she introduces her book:   In my work as a therapist and a counselor, as well as in the hundreds of conversations I've had around the world since publishing this book, I've found, to no one's surprise, that there is nothing older than not wanting to grow old.  This is as true at home in France, where sixty-eight-year-old Catherine Denueve is still considered a sex symbol, as it is in the United States.  Our world presents us with a disastrous image of old age.  Women and men everywhere  fear dying badly, of ending their lives alone, unloved, perhaps dependent or suffering from dementia, in lifeless places, far from everything...Instead of confronting this fear, we ward it off by clinging to our youth in a rather pathetic state of denial.  In doing so, we run the risk of missing out on what I call here "the work of growing old"--that is to say, cultivating a positive awareness of aging.

   A close friend of mine has never feared dying, or growing older.  Indeed, when we bump into someone lively and in their 80s or 90s, we act surprised, as if they really shouldn't be in such good physical or mental health and that they had best be careful about doing something too strenuous;  best to slow down, we think, to gradually go out with a whimper and do less and less.  But as Gail Sheehy pointed out ages ago in one of her books on growing older, we have moved into a period of projecting backward, when each age group feels at least 10 years younger than they are;  and the trend will probably only continue...10 years will grow to 15, then perhaps 20 by the middle of the century.  Someone 60 today, likely feels 50, maybe even 45, even if aches and bellies tell a different story.  Lifting that bag of salt is simply not quite as easy as before.

   In her book, de Hennezel points out various factors of life lived and the possible resentment it might be creating among younger generations.  What parents taught today's boomers about tough economic times and the need to save are being flipped on their heads as times appear flush;  spending and travel and comfortable living seem to contrast sharply with people just entering or trying to enter the work force.  Unless highly skilled, the easy days appear over...will they ever make it? 

   And so it was interesting to see a review of Sheehy's most recent book, Daring, sounding a bit like a rant on that resentment. For a professional writer, there are few truly good reasons to write a memoir.  Most writers lead boring lives, spending swaths of time sitting at their desks or in coffee shops, rifling through notes, gazing about, looking with despair at the sentence or two they have eked out, wondering if it’s lunchtime yet, and finding other ways to procrastinate.  Given the uneventfulness of the average writer’s workday, the only valid reasons to publish a soup-to-nuts autobiography are (1) to chronicle historic events they have witnessed; (2) to explain things they did that might need justification; (3) to settle scores; and, related to that, (4) to share noteworthy gossip about other writers they have known and perhaps warred with.


   By the way, the reviewer, Liza Mundy of the Washington Post, is a celebrated author and has received many awards...and she's about 30 years younger than Sheehy.  I bring this up not to stereotype but rather to point out that we will all grow old, even as we acknowledge that we are growing older, but not old.  And that might be the whole point.  We know the phrase, "you're only as young as you feel."  And whatever your age, you should revel in the moment, the joy of having even reached that point.  Look at this view from de Hennezel's book, this of an old man bedridden in a care home:  I began to enjoy my dependency.  Now I enjoy when they turn me over on my side and rub cream on my behind so I don't get sores.  Or when they wipe my brow, or they massage my legs.  I revel in it.  I close my eyes and soak it up.  And it seems very familiar to me.  It's like going back to being a child again.  Someone to bathe you.  Someone to lift you.  Someone to wipe you.  We all know how to be a child.  It's inside all of us.  For me, it's just remembering how to enjoy it.  The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads--none of us ever got enough of that.  We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of--unconditional love, unconditional attention.  Most of us didin't get enough.

   It's a surprising viewpoint, isn't it?  Unexpected?  Somehow not the view we see when we walk through a care ward or nursing facility where most of the people are in beds that have rails and waiting for the next visitor or the next meal.  But looked at through this man's eyes, one can find joy, not only for him but for us as well, surprised that we can still learn something, taught to us by a grand master, a person who not only has lived life, but continues to live life.  "Tusui ya takara," they say in Okinawa, "The elderly are our treasure."  The gold was there in front of us all along.