Growing Old

American essayist and wise woman, Helen Luke, in her book Old Age - Journey into Simplicity, writes of the challenge of growing old as opposed to aging chronologically - her emphasis being on ‘growing’.   I first read this work, along with other works by Luke, when I was in my early sixties.  I embraced that approach, and it has been a goal of mine to do just that – grow old with the emphasis on growing.  I have done this haltingly with very mixed results.   Now that quite a bit of time has passed since then and I am old by most definitions – turning 75 recently, I think it would be useful to revisit what I wrote in my reflection on that work.  This was a reflection on Luke’s imaginings of a journey taken by Odysseus following his epic return home from the Trojan war.  It is a journey in which he grows old – a true hero’s journey. 

Here the symbol of his former life—the oar which cut the water and propelled him through the hero’s journey of his youth—has now taken on a new symbolic meaning—a winnowing fan.  The winnowing fan that separated the wheat from the chaff will enable us to see clearly and differentiate the wheat, which provides the bread of heaven to nourish our souls, from the chaff which feeds our egos with empty calories.

 The journey of growing old is one of increasing humility—where we see clearly the folly of youth—the striving and the conquests that youth is inevitably err to.  Will we give in to the temptation to hold onto the dream of recapturing our fading youth or will we seek the new way in which our oars will become winnowing fans. Again, we face a challenge—to plant the oar of our last journey in a new land that will grow as we continue to explore the new land of our growing old.

 As the signs of aging creep up on me and I resign myself to the increasing challenges of greeting a new day with less vigor than usual and I have what seems to be more “senior moments”, I can see that this new land of growing old is not for the faint of heart.  It will bring new challenges as my horizon shrinks – and not just because I need a new prescription for my glasses.  I find myself a stranger in a strange land. This new land requires a new way to navigate through it which I am just beginning to explore, and I haven’t discovered a GPS that truly works yet. 

I will close with a quote from Atul Gawande, a physician and author who has explored this land with his patients and himself with great patience and wisdom:

 

And what I realized is, we were not really talking about death or dying. We were really talking about: How do you live a good life all the way to the very end, with whatever comes? And that’s where you begin to unpack. 

 May we be blessed to all grow old on our journey in this new land.