by arif dalkiran on unsplash
Each moment passes and we grow older. We’ve been doing it since the day we were conceived. Some of us grew robust; others had challenges from the beginning and yet, continue to grow older. All of us face obstacles, distractions, joys and sorrows—and we continue to grow older.
Pir Elias Amidown, the spiritual director of the Sufi Way, puts it clearly:
This body is growing old
It’s never happened before.
Old age is new to me
and I don’t know how to do it,
but despite its reputation,
it feels like a privilege.
We don’t know how to do it and were never given a road map, though there we might have had guidance to help us grow through earlier phases of life. More of us are living longer and we are creating the map as we go along. Regarding our maturing and our eldering as a privilege transforms the process from a burden to a gift.
Growing older certainly has a bad reputation. It is widely dreaded, avoided, and denigrated. Yet, it is inevitable. Once we have been born, it is guaranteed to us all. What is not guaranteed is the length of our growing older or its trajectory. We have no idea, once we have begun, what the path will look like. It happens once, though continually, in each body.
We may as well regard the undertaking as a gift, a privilege, an honour. The alternative isn’t very appealing, though it is the one portrayed for us by first world culture. We have a choice, however, to regard the mystery of our unfolding into ageing with curiosity and a willingness to explore.
It is not always easy. Illness, aching joints, anxieties may plague us. As our bodies change we are confronted with our limited lives, our mortality. And our bodies are new to us each day. We experience the unknown in each moment. Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised and joyful, other times we find ourselves in pain or disturbed or saddened or disheartened.
Our ability to hold each moment as a privilege, regardless of its content or sensation, is a challenge in itself. We often rail against the unpleasantness and unsatisfactoriness of life, especially against the uncontrollable. Might even these might be regarded as a privilege?
This is the stuff of ageing with awareness, ageing consciously, knowing that challenges lie ahead and creating the inner strength, along with outer resilience and structures that hold us in the embrace of the privilege of the elder.