October 8, 2009

Ah, youth! We are a youth culture: Botox in, wrinkles out.
Little do we acknowledge, as the great philosophers have, that as soon as we’re
born we are aging: we are “beings towards death.” The aging process cannot be
reversed (except if you are Benjamin Button.) However, once we travel past the
childhood yearning, we may begin to fear aging and try desperately to turn back
time. At first, as children, we can’t wait until we are older. What 7-year-old
doesn’t wish to be 9? What 13-year-old doesn’t want to be 16 and driving?

However, once we travel past the childhood yearning, we may
begin to fear aging and try desperately to turn back time. John Welshons,
author of One Soul, One Love, One Heart says, “For many the process of aging
gives rise to a complex of … culturally inspired neuroses.” Our culture has
defined youth and beauty as all important and aging as a catastrophe. We have
foolishly made the assumption that we are happiest and most valuable in our
youth.

Welshons continues, reporting that while we attempt to cling
to the physical appearance of youth, research contraindicates our pursuit.
Ironically, psychological studies point out that we are least happy in our
adolescent and young adult years and most happy in our 60s.

Now in her 60s herself, Harvard professor Sarah
Lawrence-Lightfoot, in an interview with Bill Moyers (Bill Moyers’ Journal,
pbs.org), talks about the “third chapter of life”. Noting that these are
arbitrary boundaries, she characterizes the ages between 50 and 75 as the
penultimate years of adventure and discovery. To support her hypothesis,
Lawrence-Lightfoot set out to talk to forty people who are on this journey. She
relates their stories in her book, The Third Chapter.

Like Welshons, she considers ours to be a youth-obsessed
culture. Perhaps they would both agree that letting go of power and status, or
leaving behind our old roles, may, at first, be terrifying, yet necessary.
Where Welshons may take us aging into quiet wisdom and spiritual reflection,
Lawrence-Lightfoot enjoins us to be seekers of new paths. However, for some,
that unexplored road may well lead to a deeper spirituality. Lawrence-Lightfoot
tells us about a woman who was delighted to transform her busy-ness and allow
herself to slow down, be still, and witness. All this helped her to see things
in a new way.

What Lawrence-Lightfoot found in her interviews was that
people were finding life to be creative and purposeful. She met a laid off
factory worker who, with his wife, frequented flea markets to get by. One day
he noticed some sculptures and thought to himself, “I could do that with
metal.” So he began to sculpture dinosaurs, his love. Eventually, his works
were shown in an art gallery.

Along with a lot of other baby boomers, I am aging. Like it
or not, America is aging. As the American Psychological Association notes:

“Americans living longer and staying increasingly active and
productive is a welcome sign for our nation. However, society’s view of old age
has not always kept up with the reality of older Americans’ health or the fact
that while many people over the age of 65 experience some limitations, they
learn to live with them and lead happy and productive lives.”

With Welshons and Lawrence-Lightfoot we can take heart. Even
the APA is in accord: wisdom and creativity can often continue to the very end
of life:

Nah, youth! Ah, the beauty of aging!

* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling
psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes
comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com
or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to http://www.DrGajdos.com/Articles.

I
love autumn and almost everything about it – I revel in its boldness and its
unabashed glory of brilliant oranges and reds.

There
was a time when I did not.

That
would have been those years I was in school as well as the 14 long years I was
teaching.

Whenever
the locusts began to sing in late summer, I knew before long, I’d be walking
through halls that smelled of chalk dust and textbooks, musty from a summer in
storage.  Student or teacher, it
was the same. I dreaded it with a heart-pounding, gut-wrenching passion.

But
that first year I had my freedom, a whole new world of beauty opened up to me.

Ahhhh,
sweet autumn.

I
love the smell of autumn. The crisp feel of air, rich with the aroma of
decaying leaves creating  mulch to
warm young spring shoots that would come up through late winter snows.

And,
I was no longer confined to vacations in the summer when crowds and hotel rates
were up.

Now
just give me a post-Labor Day’s September week on Chincoteague Island, Va. with
long walks through the pines forests, while the air and water are still warm
enough for that perfect dive through the breakers, with nary a boogie boarder
to cramp my style.

Or
an October’s week in old Cape May, N.J. for walks along the beach or along
streets of Victorian graciousness, all designed to whet your appetite for a
bowl of homemade oyster stew.

I
love the foods of autumn. (You knew that was coming didn’t you?)

Apple
Cider – the kind you get in the local farmer’s markets with its rich
deliciousness accompanied by the hard crunch of the spice cookie in its
traditional orange and black box.

And
warm homemade pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread with cream cheese or pumpkin soup
served with a dollop of sour cream floating on top.

Without
the pumpkin our early colonists would have been lost, as it was treated as a
squash, a staple of the 18th century diet. Pumpkin rinds were cut into strips
to dry, to be reconstituted in stews in the bleak cold days of winter.

I’m
trying not to mention candy corn as if I think about it too long, I’ll have to
leave mid-sentence and drive to the Wawa to eat handfuls from the bag until I
drop over from a sugar rush. I have no will power when it comes to candy corn
so it’s better left out of sight and out of mind.  

As
I said I love almost everything about autumn…except Halloween.

In
my neighborhood, we hang a photo-copied pumpkin face on our front door to
indicate children can knock for treats. But several years ago I noticed how
serene the evening became when I kept the sign in and turned off my lights.

Yes,
little girls dressed up as Belle or Cinderella and little boys dressed up as
Spider Man, with Dads or Moms a few steps behind urging them on, are what it’s
all about–but not the middle school kids who appear in street clothes with
their big pillowcases begging for candy.What happened to teaching kids values
like collecting for UNICEF?

But
now it’s time to shut down the Dell and drive up to the Wawa for some candy
corn – Happy Autumn!