THE VIRTUE OF AGING

    There are those who would maintain that there is no virtue in growing old. Those “those” are mostly those who have no idea what it means to grow older, to age. They’re still too young to think about it. When my sister taught school – she’s retired now at the grand old age of 60 – on her birthday she would ask her first-grade class how old they thought she was. The answer ranged from 22 to 72. They had to idea.

    I have an idea. I’m getting older. How do I know? The body doesn’t work they way it used to. I can’t hit a gold ball as far as I once could. I need fewer calories to go on, which makes dieting even more difficult and frustrating. The physique I once could have had but never did, is now an impossibility given the way my body’s parts seem to be moving around much against my will. I have an idea what it means to grow old.

    I also know there is a virtue in growing older, in aging, that the young also cannot possibly grasp because they do not see it as a virtue. On the contrary, they think it is downright inimical to everything they hold near and near and which society reinforces day in and day out. That virtue is simplicity. I suspect the young think simplicity, far from being virtuous, is merely being simpleminded, definitely a sign of aging!

    William May (via Context) says it better than I. “Simplicity should mark the elderly, and not merely because memory lapses into the familiar, repetitive grooves, but because the pilgrim has at long last learned to travel light. He has learned to live by simple truths and simple gifts. The prophet Micah describes such a soul as it winnows down: ‘He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’” (Micah 6:8)

    There is a virtue in traveling light. Learning how to do so, it seems, only comes with aging. Two images: 1) daughter Jessica (at age 16) going to summer camp for ten days taking with her a footlocker, two suitcases and a duffel bag; 2) Arlena (age 56 – and NOT old by any means!) now in France for twenty days living out of one small suitcase and wondering if she overpacked.

    There are other images, many, many others, contrasting how we live and move and have our being as young people and as we grow older. Somewhere in the process of aging we grow up as we step down. We begin to understand that less is truly more, that simplicity not only makes sense but also brings more joy than we could have ever imagined when we were younger, that simple gifts are the best ones and simple truths speak volumes.

    The unfortunate part in all this is that we cannot know this truth until we grow into it. We waste our time and energy, I think, trying to teach our children what we have only learned as we grew older and what they can only learn as they do the same. I don’t like some of the downsides of aging. No one does. But the upside, living the simpler life, far outweighs what the young think I am missing. If only they knew. If only they could understand. They will someday.                   

 WJP