The ancient Chinese believed that after 40, you could read a person’s character from the lines on a face. And nothing ages a face faster than worry lines, especially if they are shadowed with dread. Even so, the older we grow, it seems the more there is to be worried about.
Some self-help advice centers on various tools, techniques, and psychological tricks to keep you happy. On the most practical level, there are endless ads offering make-up advice for lipstick that won’t feather and eyeliner that won’t smudge. Stay busy. Travel. Socialize. All of these can be welcome additions to a fully lived life, but the saddest people I know are the ones who try to forestall the effects of aging indefinitely by extending midlife long past its shelf life. According to this approach: You don’t want to age? Just don’t do it. Push yourself even when you’re tired. Continue to work for other people’s approval. Keep your inevitable losses and diminishments a badly kept secret.
The reality is that no one can forestall the truth that aging is hard and that if you are fortunate enough to live long enough, you are going to experience this first-hand for yourself.
And yet, there are some among us who appear to age more gracefully than others. There are wise, old women with white hair left to fly haphazardly, seeming to share a rare inside joke with each other. They stopped asking what they should do and began starting each day by asking, “What interesting things do I want to do?” There are women who live on their own and seem quite content to do so. You can even see them sitting on park benches feeding birds, and while some might mistake them for bag ladies, they are having the time of their lives.
If you really want to have true joy in old age, you don’t need to stop going to the hairdresser or give up a passion even if society still recognizes it as valuable. But you do have to take a giant leap of faith right off the edge of your dread and into the deep waters of spirituality. This can be easier said than done, as true spirituality requires more of you than you think you have to give. Things like humility, patience, acceptance, and gratitude. The good news is that to obtain a higher state of equanimity in the world is exactly why you became a seeker in the first place. How many yoga classes did you take to strip away your ago? How many meditation retreats to find peace of mind? It wasn’t easy when you were in the heat of your life and career to reap the full benefits from your practices. But aging requires no donation, fee, or love offering. Growing older strips you of your masks and melts away your defenses without you having to do anything but feel. In the end, if you find sufficient faith not to second guess yourself, what will remain is the distilled essence of who you are. And you are dependable, kind, and radiantly beautiful. Aging viewed through the soul’s lens is not a slow, sad decline but a spiritual culmination.
How is this transformation accomplished? It begins right where you are, more often than not, in some degree of dread. Why, in terms of your prospect for spiritual development, is this good news? Because it means that you are, at the very least, taking mortality seriously. This confrontation with the archetypal shadows is what shakes you from denial and into a broader and deeper embrace of what it truly means to be human. With the admission of mortality, we suddenly see our lives in the context of the preciousness of time and its attendant-in-waiting: what matters most.
Hard on the heels of expanded vision comes the second great gift of older age: the surrender of the illusion of your personal power. This has been true your whole life, but now any of your efforts to have life deliver to you exactly what you ordered are revealed for what they always were: stop-gap measures, at most, that were always doomed ultimately to fall short. Like addicts hitting bottom, the aged finally have no choice other than to “let go and let God.” You lay down all your frantic attempts to call the shots, and finally, there is the time and space for God to intervene in your life: Divine guidance, grace, and being beloved unconditionally for no particular reason. As it turns out, all the seeking you’ve been doing all your life, this is what it has all been for.
But wait, there’s more. Stripped of our egos and old identities, people love us for who we are. The lines between our hearts dissolve, and we feel understood and appreciated. And then there’s our own blossoming attributes: gratitude, compassion, generosity.
How many times have you taken workshops or bought books on simplifying your life? Aging really does a number on our materialism, and it does it organically. Whether we need to or not, we can’t wait to lay the burden of all our possessions down and start traveling lightly through life. With lowered expectations, acceptance comes easier. And yes, there is even a time on this long, winding road where we have rectified every wrong we could and let go of regret.
Evolving spiritually is not just the solution to the problem of aging; it is, in fact, the meaning and evolutionary purpose of old age. Know this to be true for you, too, and when you look in the mirror, you will see how magnificent you have become with age. And it will take your breath away.
5 Benefits of Spiritual Aging
Want to take advantage of the spiritual benefits of aging? It’s what happens to you when you age organically without needing to invest in a yoga mat. Aging is the teacher, and the only requirement for entry is to grow old.
Here are 5 benefits:
EROSION OF EGO. Why meditate or pray to see the divine being you are behind the masks when aging reminds you every day that you’re not who you used to be, guiding you to disidentify with your ego?
SIMPLICITY. Why buy another self-help book on letting go of the clutter in your life when aging strips attachment to your worldly possessions away organically? Beyond addiction to materialism: gratitude for having enough.
RELISHING THE MOMENT. Prerequisite for the advanced course: slowing down, which is a natural part of aging.
ACCEPTANCE AND HUMILITY. Aging is the master at teaching us we are not the ones calling the shots. It takes growing old to finally give up believing that this is your show.
FORGIVENESS. It takes every one of those years to accept your and the world’s imperfections and limitations and taste the freedom of life on the other side of regret.
BULLET POINTS
No one can forestall the truth that aging is hard, and that if you are fortunate enough to live long enough, you are going to experience this first-hand for yourself.
And yet, there are some amongst us who are appearing to age more gracefully than others. If you really want to have true joy in old age, you don’t need to stop going to the hairdresser or give up a passion even if society still recognizes it as valuable. But you do have to take a giant leap of faith right off the edge of your dread and into the deep waters of spirituality.
Aging viewed through the soul’s lens is not a slow, sad decline but a spiritual culmination.
- What do you mean when you say you can give your attitude about aging a makeover? From what to what?
- What is spiritual aging?
- Why are we so reluctant to leave the prevailing attitudes about growing older behind to adopt this new way of thinking about age?
- What are some of the specific benefits?
- Does spiritual aging mean you just let yourself go? How do you know what things to hold onto—what to let go?
- We can’t avoid diminishment and loss in older age, so how can you call this a culmination?
By Carol Osborn
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