I’m rehearsing for a play. We open in 3+ weeks and for those 8 performances I now spend 12 hours a week rehearsing. Imagine if I didn’t. I’d go on stage, script in hand, madly flipping pages to find my next line.
Why do I imagine it’s wise to enter deep old age, punctuated by death, without practicing. Even improv takes years of practice.
Through conversations with others, I know my fears are standard issue, with a few personalizations.
What do we fear about aging?
Losing our minds, permanently
Losing our sight, permanently
Losing our ability to wipe our butts, permanently
Losing mobility, permanently
Losing our hearing, permanently
Losing our dignity, our will to take care of ourselves
Being among strangers, for years, who you depend on
Losing our friends who share our memories
Losing our memory
Need I go on? Who in their right mind (still) would go into that potential hellhole thoughtlessly? Well, me, until a year ago.
A year ago, I was a Boomer Peter Pan.
“I won’t grow old. I won’t grow old. I don’t wanna go to a assisted living, I don’t want to go to memory care.
“If growing old means
It would be beneath my dignity being seen pee-ing,
I'll never grow old, never grow old, never grow old
Not me!
Not I,
Not me!
Not me!”
We can assure ourselves that we’ll be different. We’ll be fully functional until we drop dead. We’ll be “sharp as a tack.” Spry. Still sexy. Still gardening and chopping our own wood. Still in the swing of things. Writing our first book or painting like Grandma Moses or… being in a play.
Statistically that is quite possible. Here and here and here are some studies about the likelihood of developing dementia. My “Petra Pan” doesn’t like reading this, but still, I don’t have to catastrophize. It’s a good bet that I’ll be in the half that bumbles along with enough marbles to take care of myself - and possibly does the best creative work of my life.
I may be able to side-step dementia, if genetics have any sway. One grandmother, who lived into her 9th decade, had it. Both my mother and father died young-ish, him at 57, her at 63, so I will never know how they would have fared. An aunt lived to 96 “sharp as a tack.” Heart disease if more likely, given genetics.
Dementia awful to imagine. However, do I have to lose my agency, my ability to choose how I go towards this?
Naming the fears of aging makes clear that we want to practice for these challenges when we still have our wits about us.
Can I say yes to whatever comes my way, even if it’s a big “no!” now? I can say to myself: yes, I may lose memory, yes, I may lose mobility, yes, I may lose friends, yes, I may end up in a care facility, these things happen to people who have the privilege of growing into deep old age. I may not. I prefer not. I’ll do what I can to keep all my marbles, organs and joints. But these things do happen to people like me.
As with all things that could happen, knowledge, acceptance and a few good friends can help. Since I didn’t have children, these are how I am preparing.
Isn’t that what the Buddha saw that sent him on his search for truth beyond aging, sickness and death? These come to all of us in some form, with some degree of suffering, but there is an end to suffering: a clear, unfettered mind.
Aging can be practiced
I’ve taken 3 workshops on aging: one with Jade Sherer, Aging to Saging, and I’m in the middle of an online version of this one, Death’s Door with Kim Rosen.
Practicing aging has been revolutionary for me. Not the management of aging, but the soul’s journey of aging and death.
As Stuart Brand said in the Whole Earth Catalog, “If we are gods, we might as well get good at it.”
I conclude with a famous quote from Viktor Frankl “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Drawing on his time in a Nazi concentration camp, he went on to say, “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity...” ― Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning
For Frankl, meaning came from three possible sources: purposeful work, love, and courage in the face of difficulty. I’m glad to say that “coming of aging” consciously is giving me all three.