What is the work of aging?
Perhaps it is harvesting our wisdom, finding meaningful ways to pass it on, fulfilling our lives by emptying out to others all our good. What is the work of aging, and what can it be?
Our culture makes the work of aging into a clinking shell of itself. Aging becomes retirement. Retirement is sold to us as endless golf and trips to exotic places on luxurious ocean liners. We sit by the pool as piña coladas are brought to us. Absent are heart to heart talks with grandchildren, and the whispers around the death bed. Present are tinkling bells meant to cover over the distant low tolling.
But here I am nearing 65 with fresh and lively ideas of how to bring my real self into my work…at last. Would that I had 30 more years to put it into practice! And maybe I do! But I can also transmit what I have learned, and not so much what, but how I have learned it, to my grandchildren, and they can get to real living sooner.
They of course have their children to raise, their food to earn, their scars to acquire. But there are those who early teach the world. So there is hope that these might each become one of the whole-finders.
What is the work of aging?
:- Doug.
