THE POWER OF AGE

There are colors in the sky at sunset that we see at no other time of the day

I met a lovely older couple of Las Cruces, New Mexico, last week. They showed me this picture of the three of us in the 1980’s, when I officiated their wedding in Denver. 36 years later they’re still married, and we laughed at the idea that I’d tied a tight knot!

These days I think a lot about those years. While the long shadow of Freud has left all of us with an almost obsessive focus on childhood, it seems to me that every phase of life is as meaningful - and determinative - as any other. Every decade and every chapter of life is a drama leading up to the next one, and each are as important as childhood. Figuring out the years between 30 and 60 feels as significant to me as figuring out the years before then.

I quoted a saying in my book A Woman’s Worth: “Youth is when you learn; age is when you understand.” It feels like the older years of life are about trying to understand what just happened! The middle decades - the ups, downs, successes, losses, pains, joys, failures, sorrows, loves. What WAS all that?! For those of us now in Chapter Three, it’s not just childhood we’re seeking to understand; it’s also all the decades since. They say everything becomes clear in the last few seconds of our life - but couldn’t it become clear sooner?

I spent most of last week in New Mexico. I lived there one year in my early 20’s, and I experienced last week something I often feel walking on the streets of Manhattan. It's almost as though I see a ghost of myself back then. I’ll see a young woman with long earrings and exposed midriff, and I’m thinking “I was her once.” When you’re young, you’re literally incapable of imagining a time when you’ll no longer be. Now, I better understand my father when he said, “When you’re old, you don’t feel old.” You’re the same person at 70 that you were at 20. Who we are inside doesn’t age.

I’m grateful for the spiritual understanding that death doesn’t really exist, that the life of the spirit is eternal and dying is like taking off a suit of clothes. When you age, the Grim Reaper doesn’t seem like a fantasy figure so much as someone across the way rambling slowly towards you. Hopefully he’ll take a while to get here, but the thought of death is never far from the mind of an older person. Carl Jung said the failure to deal with the topic robs the second half of life of its meaning. There is much to grieve as we grow older, to be sure, but there also much to embrace. The life of the psyche grows more illumined as the obsessions of the world begin to fade. And that in turn actually illumines the world. I remember reading a line from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “As I age my beauty steals inward.”

I reflect on the archetype of the old woman on the edge of town, using a stick to stir some concoction inside a large metal pot. I never asked myself when I was younger, what exactly would be in that pot? But I think I know now. She’s stirring the experiences of her lifetime into an alchemical brew; that stick is her developed consciousness, her depth of understanding. And hopefully her brew might be of use to those who come after. Young travelers will come by her house and she’ll give them a cup of understanding to help strengthen them on their journey.

Why is her house on the edge of town? Because she still cares about certain things, but she doesn’t care about them like she used to. She’s letting go of one world and beginning to see another one more clearly. She’s usually at that house with other older women, if I remember my myths and fairy tales correctly. And she’s often seen as a witch of some sort. Of course she is, by those who have no understanding of wisdom. She’s an important part of the mosaic of life, and these years are an important part of her life. The older years can rank among our most magical ones yet if we allow ourselves to see them as a new frontier. We’re pushing the boundaries of who we can be as we age now, as long as we honor the gifts of the psyche and allow them to take us wherever they will. The sky is rarely more beautiful than it is at sunset. There are colors in the sky that we can see at no other hour of the day.