As we enter the second half of our lives there is a critical question we would be wise to ask: What is the point of living longer if it doesn’t mean becoming wiser and being more able to serve something beyond one’s little self? If older is not wiser, then just like the expression that youth is wasted on the young, it can be said that aging is, in some ways, being wasted on the aged.
We have an important choice to make as we age. We can become elders and develop greater vision of life as we mature or we can slip into narrow, egocentric patterns exhibited by olders and lose sight of who we were intended to be and what we came to give this world.
Elders fall into the category of things that are made, not born. An infant becomes a child simply by aging, but a person cannot become an elder by simply becoming older. Old age alone cannot make the elder, for the qualities most needed involve something more than physical change. Becoming an elder is not a “natural occurrence”— there is something philosophical and spiritual that is required.
In traditional societies elders became the guardians of mysteries and keepers of the higher laws of life. Having grown both older and wiser, they knew best what needed to be preserved and remembered in order for human life to be noble, meaningful and in tune with nature. Elders would become living depositories of wisdom for the next generation to draw upon; if not, everyone would suffer a loss of knowledge and greater disorientation in the world.
At this point in the current collective drama of the world, however, something strange has developed. A great confusion has fallen like a shadow across the world, a great forgetting is underway in which an increasing number of us arrive at life’s final hours having forgotten who we are. We have better diets, medical advances and technological improvements; many of us live to a ripe old age. Yet fewer of us seem to ripen into elders able to harvest knowledge from life experience and pass it along as genuine wisdom— genuine wisdom that relaxes hostility, settles common fears and makes an inner balance more possible.
What can we do about this? Appreciate our energy and longevity, but set aside simplistic ideas of progress that seem to diminish the true value of older people even while adding years to our lives. Instead, start looking for answers to essential questions about life and death.
Rather than accepting this “great forgetting,” hope for and seek a deep recollection of what is most important and extract living knowledge from our life experience. And most especially start honoring the wisdom and experience of our lives.
We would also be wise to remember that the role of elders is sustaining imagination and wisdom in the world and that when there is no genuine growth in growing older, aging becomes all about loss. Without imagination, creativity and wisdom, the longer people live the more of life they seem to lose.
It does not serve us to retire as if there are no later stages of life to bring our full attention to. Let us return to the questions that opened this article. Let us keep them close and ask them of ourselves often: What is the point of living longer if it doesn’t mean becoming wiser and being more able to serve something beyond one’s little self? And what can we do each day to inherit more of the mantle of the elder and bring greater vision, wisdom and remembering to a world that is so desperately in need of both.
Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller, author and scholar of mythology, anthropology and psychology (www. mosaicvoices.org). He combines storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness and interpretations of ancient myths with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals. Michael will be appearing Friday, June 5th as part of “Navigating Your Future – Wisdom Keeper Series” at Celebration Hall at Seattle’s Center for Spiritual Living with co-hosts George and Sedena Cappannelli. For information, call 206-527-8801 or visit http://www.spiritualliving.org/navigating
