Welcome
to the Good Life
“Growing
old is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention to the spiritual
aspects of life. The body changes teach us about fate, time, nature, mortality,
and character. Aging forces us to decide what is important in life.”
Thomas
Moore (Care of the Soul)
The
past few years, I have dealt almost daily with pain in some part of my body. Now,
it happens to be hands and knees, but it has moved around so as not to leave
out any joints or muscles. The effect of it is to put me through the stages of
grief. I’ve been angry, sad; I’ve bargained with God, and denied there was a
problem, and I’ve longed for my youth—grieved its passing. Always an active
person, now I must choose different ways of being active—slower, less
aggressive ways. My friend, Ladonna, just had open heart surgery to repair five
of her coronary vessels. Two days before being hospitalized, she was clearing trees
and brush off her land, working like a mule to get a lake house ready to rent.
Now, she is recovering at home, with books and music and home health care. She’s
lucky to be alive, and she knows it. Life changes with age. It teaches you
flexibility.
Sometimes
the changes are good. As Moore says, the soul nudges itself toward attention to
the spiritual aspects of life. A painful body, a damaged heart, will make you
slow down and take stock. Some of us are used to living in bodies that always cooperated
with our plans, and when they suddenly don’t, we are shocked. It’s the body’s
way of saying to us, “Hey, give me a break. I’ve served your wishes all these
years and now I need to rest a little bit.” If a friend said this to you, you
would insist on their taking it easy, and probably cook a few meals for them.
So, why not you? Why not your body?
The
soul needs time and focus to prepare for life’s winding down. The developmental
skills are different—less ego driven. The desire to give back what has been
given to you becomes stronger. The drive to share what you know from the school
of life seeks out opportunities. Attention is required for the inner life,
which means that the outer life must take a backseat. It’s not sad. It’s just
different. You can compare it to the leap from the unself-conscious innocence
of childhood, where the focus is on play, discovery, and raw adventure, to the
changes that come with adolescence, when we suddenly become self-involved and
mortified by our looks, desires and drives. We humans change with age. It’s
coded in the DNA. It’s okay.
Aging
with grace is not easy. We want to cling to our young bodies and watch them
change with sadness. It would be a lie to say otherwise. But eventually, we
reconcile, we reach that last stage of grief, which is acceptance. As our
bodies are less agile and comfortable, our souls become our greatest source
of joy. We can be content with sitting in the sun instead of working in it. We
can focus on reading a book instead of writing one. We can drink in the beauty
of other, younger bodies and hope that they are delighting in themselves as
much as we did. Life is good at all its stages if you allow it to be.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
1 comment:
Beautifully written... so true.
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