The Wonder of Aging: A New Approach to Embracing Life After Fifty - Hardcover

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Michael Gurian is a marriage and family counselor in private practice, and the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-seven books. Michael cofounded the Gurian Institute, a training and research organization, in 1996 and frequently speaks at and consults with corporations, physicians, hospitals, schools, and other professionals. He has been called “the people’s philosopher” for his ability to combine cutting-edge science with people’s everyday lives.

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The Wounder of Aging

Chapter 1

Toward a New Spirit of Aging

In order to come fully to the encounter with whatever gives ultimate meaning, in order to really wrestle with the angel, one must be a free agent, not defined by another, or by cultural imperatives.

—Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit

In 2011, my research team and I developed three surveys, asking 2,752 people to provide insights about life after fifty. We were basically asking baby boomer subjects to define “a new spirit of aging” for the new millennium. More women than men responded to our survey, at about 70 percent to 30 percent. In our work in gender studies over the last two decades, we have found this result to be consistent and robust. We have also found that, in general, men write fewer words than women.

Craig, fifty-three, from Los Angeles, responded in this brief but cogent way. “I’ve experienced deaths in my family and some early health problems, but I understand where I am. I am finally able to handle what is on my plate—and what is on my plate is more than it’s ever been. One thing I’m especially doing is listening to life (and listening to some very good and wise friends). The metaphor in my mind is that I’ve now entered the middle weekend of a wonderful two-week vacation. I still have a week of vacation left but I am not entirely unaware that the plane is leaving next Sunday and the vacation will end. I call this next week of my life ‘Christmases Yet to Come.’ ”

As I followed up with Craig, he talked about the new freedom he was seeking now in his fifties. It was not the freedom of “escape” but rather of new engagement with life. Craig had married for the first time in his forties, started a new family (his daughter was six), and had decided to leave the business world to get a teaching degree. He was also volunteering in his daughter’s school and had started an educational foundation with some of the money he had made in the financial services industry. Craig was stepping forward into the second half of life with vigor, vision, and wonder.

Marcy, fifty-six, wrote a longer story, also revelatory of a new spirit of aging in her life.

“My husband and I are originally from the Northeast and have been living in Georgia for 18 years. My daughter is 19 and a sophomore at college, and my son is 23, and graduated. I am working to cut apron strings with him and give us both a new kind of freedom. My daughter left for school a year ago August, and our dog passed away in May. I decided that I would get a dog, a French shepherd, so that I could participate in outdoor activities, walking, hiking, and training her for things. That has worked out very well; it has provided for me a new set of folks that I have met (lots of people within 10 years on either side of my age). I have sort of re-created myself in this role, more laid-back, no makeup, lots of enjoyment from watching dogs play together and chatting with their owners.

“Nine years ago, my mother, 88, lived in New England on her own, but I realized that as an only child I could not hop on a plane from Georgia and help her when she needed it. So I insisted that she move here. She did and is now 97. Sometimes, being with her makes me afraid of being that old; it doesn’t seem like much fun at all, especially since I’ve realized I could live another thirty or forty years or more. But at the same time, being with Mom more has made me want to do and try new things. Caring for her makes me want to finally become the fearless and free person I’ve always wanted to be, and now I think I definitely have the time to do that.”

“I want to become the fearless and free person I’ve always wanted to be. . . . ” How many of us have said those words, or something like them, over the decades of our youth and middle adulthood? Many of us. Perhaps all of us. In the survey questions, neither I nor anyone on my team used the word “freedom,” but that word and its meanings showed up in many of the responses. As people revealed wanting happier, growth-ful, fearless, and vital ways of living now, they discussed their sense of living in a new time in life when they could develop a new sense of freedom. They talked about a sense of now-more-than-ever and now-as-never-before. Freedom became the spiritual goal within all other goals. In reading the surveys, I understood people to be using the word “freedom” as a sign of spiritual growth at deep levels. People were hoping to redefine and spiritualize their lives so that “problems” became “challenges” and difficult parts of life became no longer “enemies to battle” but spiritually meaningful, complimentary facets of real life, an evolving part of each person’s development of a philosophy of personal completion.

There is a wonderful film about some of this called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. In it, the character played by Judi Dench speaks about aging and new adventures: “This is a new and different world . . . the challenge is not just to cope, but to thrive.” Dench’s character and a number of others leave England and move to a retirement hotel in Jaipur, India. They enter a completely new world filled with challenges that ultimately help them find new meaning. They grow into a kind of wisdom that frees them to care for others and themselves in vital ways. Where they felt unworthy of success or love in the past, they discover worthiness and love in the present. They reassess what they do and think, becoming the role models people need in order to see where to walk and rediscover a sense of wonder. They realize they have sown many miracles in their lifetimes, and there are more to sow. They sense that pain and sorrow are beautiful evidence of a life lived for purpose. The whole film, from beginning through denouement, “breathes into the void” a sense of what freedom and fearlessness can be for people who age with vision, growth, and self-discovery.

My wife, Gail, and I went to see this film as I was developing this chapter. The goal of this chapter is to concentrate on key standards for what might constitute a new, free, and fearless spirit of aging today. Seeing the film helped me to fully understand why freedom is so important to us as we age, so crucial to positive aging and the continuation or rediscovery of wonder as we age. It is a theme at the center of the spirituality of aging, as we will explore in this chapter and this book. We may lose a lot of our childhood wonder as we move through adulthood and middle age, but as we age we have a chance to live in wonder again (and freshly, maturely) as never before.

By way of coincidence (if there is any such thing), the evening after seeing the film I spoke by phone with my father, eighty-three, who, with my mother, had taken me to India to live in the 1960s (we lived not far from Jaipur, in Hyderabad). He and I talked about the film and about his life as an octogenarian. A number of times recently he had fallen and injured himself, so he had moved into a retirement community where he could get more immediate care. Because of ongoing issues with his lungs, he also needed to move away from Santa Rosa, California, where he and my mother had lived, to a drier climate. When my mother passed away, he chose to move to a retirement community in Las Vegas, where my sister and my aunt live.

I shared with my father the “freedom” that was emerging as a theme in this book. He responded,...