Is Aging Beautiful?

Birthday Month

Source: Betty Luceigh

November is my birthday month. No surprise, my age increased by a year once again. When very young, the increase in years was happily welcomed as an advance toward the independence of adulthood. Now each year feels more like a countdown to nothinghood. Long gone are pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey parties--with cake. This year I had to get to bed early for a surgical procedure the next day--with fasting.

As I recently reflected on my senior age, I thought about how my future could be dictated largely by the nature and rate of unpredictable bodily deteriorations. I easily worry about whether I can remain in the home I love, whether I’ll be able to walk or drive myself, or whether my savings will be enough to meet inflating expenses. I see sad changes happening to my friends and recognize there are others, perhaps homeless and alone, likely having a worse version. Email news about my high school class is usually an obituary. Gadzooks! Such events and thoughts can arouse states of foggy depression. In reality, many of these same changes could have happened even in my prime years. Denial is easy when young, more difficult as the number of candles increases.

Not so long ago, my imaginary Aging Inventory of Disasters seemed to focus on issues of health and finances. Now there are new items to lengthen the list, such as the potential rapid impacts on my life due to climate change, cultural changes, and global economic changes. While trying to prioritize my fretting, I’m also expected to clean up emails, update my cellphone yet again, and change over all accounts to online while I make sure my computer stays protected with the latest downloads. Oh, and I mustn’t forget that I have to retain the ability to identify scams! The this-is-nuts line was crossed long ago. It is not easy to want to simplify one’s life just as the whole world seems to be racing to a peak of unsustainable complexity.

Still, I do have choices. What has changed is the nature of many of them. I must take into account different factors that can impact basic needs. I must shift some priorities on what those needs are. There isn’t any one answer to how to approach these expanding challenges. There is, however, an abundance of advice that may or may not apply to me personally, but often seems to cost more of my savings before I can find out. Some elders are blessed with helpful families, others not.

One of my difficult choices is to be fully aware of the present moment, the now. I do have to think in the present moment about the future in order to plan for my essentials, but I don’t have to get trapped in mental/emotional scenarios that are better addressed only if they actually happen. I find the most comfort in choices that affirm my core values, choices such as compassion, kindness, gratitude, integrity, and creativity. Taken together, these and related values fall under one comprehensive heading for me: Beauty.

I can condense my many concerns and distractions about aging into answering one question: “Is my aging Beautiful?” First of all, I don’t mean Beautiful as in “Am I aging glamorously?” I wouldn’t be unhappy if that were the case, but I am speaking here of Beauty in the context of a spiritual essence. The fundamental question may be only one, but I believe I will need to ask it many times in many different contexts. Perhaps the question is better stated as “Is my aging Beautiful now?”

I wonder, regardless of my physical or emotional condition, if I can treat myself with kindness and compassion as well as others who may not do so because they see me in a category of “invisible” aging humans. I wonder, regardless of changes in my mental processing, if I can be grateful for all I have offered in my semi-forgotten past as I continue to offer creatively in the present. I wonder if I can express what wisdom I have to share without need for another’s acceptance of it. All of these inner questions could be applicable to a variety of situations because they are beyond any egoistic need for specific things or responses. There is a sense of liberation that accompanies these possibilities of a new way of living in the present moment. This choice is not limited to the elderly.

It is not liberation from the need for indulging in unnecessary things that is the most significant. The most important liberation is from the false/small self that has believed such things are what life has been about all this time. What surpasses all fear of changes to come is to truly awaken to my connection to the Universal Self that gave me the gift of this life and the opportunity to express it. To awaken my Self-awareness is to realize the Whole of which I always have been, am now, and will ever be a participant. I was created in a form intended to continuously change. May the Light of Beauty grow each year within me as expanding candles on my cake are lit. May it continue to do so until a time when all that is left to see is the total illumination of a Beautiful existence celebrating its return home.

© Betty Luceigh, 11/2019