On Aging

A Basis For Hope

Two ideas we can keep in mind as we travel this new year of 2023: First, ‘We age the way we live.’ Second, ‘An authentic heart flows from a focus on ‘being’ not ‘having.’ These thoughts have been percolating in my head since January 1 and have raised up some essential questions: ‘Am I aging well?’ ‘Who am I becoming?’ ‘Do I value ‘being’ over ‘having’?’ I admit I’m particularly feeling it these days as I am entering into a new decade of life!

Henri Nouwen and Walter Gaffney have offered some helpful reflections that have guided some of my thinking:

We believe that aging is the most common human experience which overarches the human community as a rainbow of promises. It is an experience so profoundly human that it breaks through the artificial boundaries between childhood and adulthood, and between adulthood and old age. It is so filled with promises that it can lead us to discover more and more of life’s treasures. We believe that aging is not a reason for despair but a basis for hope, not a slow decaying but a gradual maturing, not a fate to be undergone but a chance to be embraced. (Henri Nouwen and Walter Gaffney, Aging: The Fulfillment of Life)

With their encouragement, I emphasize these particular insights that give me new energy:

1. Everyone one of us—whether we are ten, twenty, forty, or seventy—all of us share in this passage of time and the impact it has on our bodies, minds and spirits.

2. We don’t have to compete with one another as if immortality is some prize that only a few win. We all pass through the same life cycle from the womb to the tomb.

3. Let’s help each other move through the passage of time in a spirit of acceptance, compassion and solidarity by accepting our aging reality rather than fighting it with angry and bitter spirits.

4. We don’t have to fear aging (or try to reject it). It is simply part of our human experience which young and old share every day.

5. Let’s learn from the young ones in their enthusiasm for growing older! What secrets can they teach us about aging? What good things can we anticipate that we have not thought of? (Didn’t Jesus tell us that to enter the kingdom of God we must become like children…)

6. It is through aging that we are able to mature and come to a sense of authenticity and by it reach our ultimate goal—the shedding of the false self and the putting on of the true self.

The setting sun signals that another year is passing. It isn’t a scary thing from which we must flee in terror. Rather, it teaches us the truth that we have one life to live as we make our journey under the sun. Our true vocation is to ‘age well’ and to receive each day as a gift to celebrate.