THE HEAVINESS OF AGE

  

Last night listening to folk music from the early 60s on You Tube, I was immediately transported back to my college years (1957-1961).  Thinking about  how the years have transformed my psyche, the phrase, the heaviness of years, came immediately to mind, and as I am inclined to do, I began exploring this idea in my journal.  I thought about how age tends to diminish our ambitions, aspirations, and willingness to take risks, as well as encouraging distrust and suspicion of anything new, a growing reliance on daily routine, confusion over an evolving youth culture, and uncertainty over the extent of our personal future.  How depressing!

But even as I was writing this bleak scenario of aging, which carries a modicum of truth, I realized it was only one side of the coin; there is an equally compelling argument to make for the benefit of age.  The weight of the years is well balanced.

The uncertainty of the future   I have difficulty dealing with the loss of the “some days” of my youth.   As a younger man I could cling to the notion that someday my dreams would come true, and my aspirations achieved.  The future was limitless.  At some point in my mid 60s that began to change, the future was narrowing and the “some days” began to diminish.  Disastrous?  Perhaps, but there is another way to look at this.  With a diminishing and uncertain future, one is forced to focus on the present.  For someone who tends to spend too much time thinking about the tomorrows, this is a positive step, with each birthday I move one year closer to learning to live in and appreciate my “todays.  In the end, it is the journey, and not the destination that matters.

Following the dream and taking risks I know something about this.  At age 39 I decided to leave my private medical practice and work part time in an emergency room so I could pursue a career in art (I had no formal training).  At age 53 I opened a medical practice in a converted barn on our farm, and at age 62 moved 950 miles away from family and friends to Paducah Kentucky to be one of the first artists to sign up for their artist relocation program.  I made each of these decisions, and many others, without fear or trepidation because I was confident that they were the steps intended for me...I knew that as much as one can know something.

But now, six years later, when I think about these moves I wonder, could I do that today?  Does our spirit respond to age the way our bones and joints do?  Does it tend to get a little slow and more inclined to remain comfortable and secure rather than jump ahead into the unknown?  Those decisions were made with the security of the “some days” to fall back on if needed, “some days” that become more elusive with the passing years.

Although taking risks to pursue dreams become more difficult and perhaps more stressful, the years provide us with a new resource…experience.  And if we pay attention to our past, experience brings us another resource...wisdom.  Together they can help guide us through the transitions and changes faced in these later years.  We are better equipped to assess risks and have a more realistic notion of the consequences of our actions.  Perhaps my spirit and my personal aspirations have been buffered a bit by the years, but they remain intact, and I pursue them a bit slower, with deliberation and determination that these same years have provided.