Dear friends,
If you have seen Antiques roadshow, you have learned the value of old furniture often depends on the patina and signs of use it has. If we strip it or paint it, the value drops considerably. It seems counterintuitive. Our western culture dictates that if it is old, make it look young. If it has flaws, hide them. The resistance to aging is a kind of national dis-ease that has terrible consequences.
George Santayana: “to be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with Spring.”
Many of us who are senior in our wisdom and experience notice a kind of shaming around our age. People say unconscious things like calling older women “young lady” or referring to a senior man as Grandpa, when he is not a relative. It is as if young people are afraid of the natural process of Nature. Old age is a result of growth, not a failure of some kind. Every living being and all of nature is in the growth game. We are born, we bloom, we express our individuality and we disappear. Like Spring itself, we eventually become autumn. The leaves fall, the earth reclaims them, the cycle continues.
Old people ought to be respected for surviving wars, disease, loss and heartbreak. But also for gaining wisdom, for the love they have kept intact, for the joy they may have brought to life, for the good they have shared. No one gets it right on all counts, but overall a long life is an epic story that deserves to be told and youth needs to hear it.
I will always remember what the young nephew of the Dalai Lama said to us older folks at a conference about creating a better world. "we need to work together. You have the wisdom and we have the energy."
Stay tuned in,
Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com
