Being Old is a Privilege

Paco Dennis said:
I still haven't figured out what being old has to do with any privilege's I can think of.
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I think it has to do with it being something available to you which isn't always available to everyone. Doesn't guarantee the experience will be everything one might wish for but at least it's a nice big slice of opportunity for whatever we can manage.
 

MarkD said:

Mr Stoppelmann, I know you worked in end of life nursing. I wonder if you've heard of or read this book review in Maria Popova's Marginalian weekly newsletter titled Favorite Books of 2023?​

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HOW TO SAY GOODBYE​

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote while ailing with leukemia. To comprehend the luckiness of deathis to comprehend life itself. When a loved one is dying and we get to be by their side, it is a double luckiness — lucky that we got to have the love at all, and lucky, which is not everyone’s luck, that we get to say goodbye. Even so, accompanying a loved one as they exit life is one of the most difficult and demanding experiences you could have.

How to move through it is what my talented friend and sometime-collaborator Wendy MacNaughton explores in How to Say Goodbye (public library) — a tender illustrated field guide to being present with and for what Alice James called “the most supremely interesting moment in life,” drawing on Wendy’s time as artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and her own profound experience at her beloved aunt’s deathbed.





Punctuating Wendy’s signature ink-and-watercolor illustrations of Zen Hospice residents and her soulful pencil sketches of her aunt are spare words relaying the wisdom of hospice caregivers: what to say, how to listen, how to show up, how to stay present with both the experience of the dying and your own.

The book’s beating heart is an invitation to grow comfortable with change, with uncertainty, with vulnerability, radiating a living affirmation of the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s insistence that “when you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence.”












In lovely symmetry to Zen Hospice Project founder Frank Ostaseski’s five invitations for the end of life, Wendy draws on what she learned from caregivers and distills the five most powerful things we can say to the loved one dying — “a framework for a conversation of love, respect, and closure,” rendered in words of great depth and great simplicity, like the language of children, for it is this realm of unselfconscious candor we return to at the end:


Emanating from these tender pages is a reminder that death merely magnifies the fundamental fact of living: We are fragile motes of matter in the impartial hand of chance, beholden to entropy, haunted by loss, saved only by love.









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Nice illustrations.
 
When I was a teenager, I was having a beer with an Uncle,
who was probably in his 30s, I am thinking to myself, will I
ever be that age, it must take a long time to get there, then
one day, I discovered that I am now older than most of my
relatives ever made it to and it didn't take a long time, I seem
to have got here in a flash!

Mike.
 
Mike said:
When I was a teenager, I was having a beer with an Uncle,
who was probably in his 30s, I am thinking to myself, will I
ever be that age, it must take a long time to get there, then
one day, I discovered that I am now older than most of my
relatives ever made it to and it didn't take a long time, I seem
to have got here in a flash!
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Yeah, thought it'd take longer

in high school, we'd sit around and talk about the future
Year 2000 came to mind
'Like that'll ever happen.....We'll be 50!'
'AHHHHAAAAHAAAA!'
 
Mr. Ed said:


I am not old, however, evidence shows overtime body and mind depreciates in value like a used automobile.
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My Mother, The Car? And I thought that I was car crazy. Seeing the octagon badge on the front of my car at some classic car show, a fellow asked what the letters MG stood for. Without even thinking about it I replied: My Girlfriend.
 
Rakaia said:
My understanding is it stands for Morris Garages.
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That's correct. The marque name originated from the initials of Morris Garages, William Morris's private retail sales and service company. The marque was in continuous use, except for the duration of the Second World War, from its inception in 1924 until 2005, and then from 2007 under Chinese ownership. Click on this link and you can both read how MG started and see a photo of the beautifully restored, first ever, MG car.
 
Except for the physical issues I love being the age I am and always expected I'd get here; in fact I will be happy to be a good deal older if it is in the cards. It isn't that I fear death. It is coming but when it gets here, I won't be. So death is nothing to me. Life is what I like and I enjoy the perspective I've lived so long to acquire.

Before I ever went to school I would look at my grandparent's hands and mine and try to imagine my little pink ones getting gnarly. I could do without the arthritis but otherwise I think they look like the work horses they've been.
 
Last night I finally finished the first chapter of James Hillman's The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life. I rather liked this bit toward the end of Chapter 1 about reflecting on why we age.

Our inquiry will aim deeper than the evident meaning of “the last time” as the end and therefore death. If that were all, the inquiry could stop here, satisfied with this banal result. Remember, we are eluding death all through this book, trying to prevent death from swallowing into its impenetrable darkness the light of intelligent inquiry. Death is a single stupefying generality that puts an end to our thinking about life. The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?
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Two weeks from today I will (hopefully) turn 80. I used to think aging was a downward spiral, but now I'm convinced its a downward staircase - with some big stairs thrown in. I won't go into may aches and pains, but I will say I'm grateful for my mental and some physical capabilities.

But over the last few years something has bugged me. As we age, most of us accumulate wisdom and experience and skills - that we would have loved to have when we were young. Like they say, "if only I knew then what I know now". So my thought is to share my "wisdom" with my kids (4 in mid 50s) and other young folks and save the grief of making unnecessary mistakes. But it turns out that most just want to make their own version of the wheel.
 
MarkD said:
Last night I finally finished the first chapter of James Hillman's The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life. I rather liked this bit toward the end of Chapter 1 about reflecting on why we age.
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You mentioned your wife being ill I believe. Does this philosophy resonate with your life experiences when things are not too pleasant? Does it help broadening your perspective? It seems like it would. There is a gentle energy that comes from real life in all it's forms.
 
Mobilman44 said:
Two weeks from today I will (hopefully) turn 80. I used to think aging was a downward spiral, but now I'm convinced its a downward staircase - with some big stairs thrown in. I won't go into may aches and pains, but I will say I'm grateful for my mental and some physical capabilities.

But over the last few years something has bugged me. As we age, most of us accumulate wisdom and experience and skills - that we would have loved to have when we were young. Like they say, "if only I knew then what I know now". So my thought is to share my "wisdom" with my kids (4 in mid 50s) and other young folks and save the grief of making unnecessary mistakes. But it turns out that most just want to make their own version of the wheel.
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Boy! Isn't that the truth! We just had one of our children here for a few days. It is a different world than we understand now. Good luck is all you can say to them. :)
 
Paco Dennis said:
You mentioned your wife being ill I believe. Does this philosophy resonate with your life experiences when things are not too pleasant? Does it help broadening your perspective? It seems like it would. There is a gentle energy that comes from real life in all it's forms.
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Yes it does. However this part of what I quoted doesn't seem to ring true: "The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose". I've always thought that keeping cognizant of mortality adds impetus to emphasize the important over the trivial, although too firm a hand on the tiller can have other adverse effects. One needs to leave room for the light to get in too.
 
Maybe if someone gets to a place where they have lost all hope ( in something _ _ _ _ _ _ ), whatever that IS, then they have too high of an expectation of "IT". A change in attitude might be all that is needed. That might seem impossible, but it can be done if they want to change.
 
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Thanks, Stoppelmann, I'm enjoying this thread, but if I may just mention a tiny problem I have with the word 'privilege'.
A privilege is something that is granted, like a right, but granted by whom, if you please? I'm afraid the state might like to take credit for our advanced years. I always like to decide for myself who I am grateful to. I know I'm picking nits, please forgive it, and actually I can't think of a substitute word.
 
Many of us "oldsters" have so much to offer in the way of advice, experiences, and skillsets. Yet, few want to hear it, and of those that do, well much of it goes in one ear and out the other.

I learned everything I know the hard way, and in some ways I'm glad I did. But, my kids had so many more advantages than I had, but only one of the four seemed to value the ol man's "words of wisdom". When they were teens, I could tell that one son seemed to value what I said, the others pooh poohed it. My daughter and two other sons valued what their peers said much more than what Mom and Dad had to offer.

They were born close together, and all were teens in the early/mid '80s. It's crazy, before the age of 15, they were all absolutely terrific in so many ways. At about 15, three changed dramatically, one not so much.

So now they are in their mid '50s. My oldest son is definitely a "super achiever" in life. His two brothers are not, and his twin sister is on her 5th hubbie, and I can truthfully say they were all bums. Anyway, about 15 years ago I finally said to my oldest, "I just don't understand, all four of you were raised as equally as we could, and yet you have been so successful in life, in comparison to your brothers and sister".

"Dad, I listened to what you and Mom had to say, but I also looked to tomorrow." "My brothers and sister were only interested in today". Well, that surprised me a bit but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

Don't misunderstand, all four are good and loving individuals, but three of them just had to build their own version of the wheel, and they did it the hard way.......
 
gruntlabor said:
Thanks, Stoppelmann, I'm enjoying this thread, but if I may just mention a tiny problem I have with the word 'privilege'.
A privilege is something that is granted, like a right, but granted by whom, if you please? I'm afraid the state might like to take credit for our advanced years. I always like to decide for myself who I am grateful to. I know I'm picking nits, please forgive it, and actually I can't think of a substitute word.
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I understand the quandary, but privilege is a special right, advantage, or opportunity available only to a particular person or group. In this case, it is available to the small group who survive long enough to look back on many years. Depending on how you perceive your life, it can also mean something granted, whether life is a gift or just some ill-fortuned coincidence.
 

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