AGING AND THE CYCLE OF BIRTH, DEATH AND REBIRTH

I was visiting a friend of mine the other day whom I’ve known for about a decade.  He is in his mid 70’s and I don’t see him that frequently. As we walked over to see his garden, I watched him walk from behind and I thought, oh, he is slowing down.  Then we walked back to his patio and I affirmed in my mind that I wasn’t just imaging something.

I felt sad watching him.  He’s a real sweetheart of a man, and it is just painful.   He’s in pretty good health as far as I know, he is just getting old, something that I know every day when I look in the mirror and see my white beard.  I wonder if I too am slowing down.  It is hard to see ourselves.  I don’t think so, but at some point, of course I am going to slow down. 

Our job as elders is to acknowledge that we are no longer the young bucks or does that we once were.  That’s not an easy task; gaining spiritual maturity takes a lot of personal work. Our world is way too full of spiritually immature older folk. 

I sometimes think of an aging bull in a bison herd.  He knows he is aging.  He doesn’t have the strength he once had, he no longer gets to breed the cows of the herd and he struggles to keep up with everyone else. When the herd is attacked by a pack of wolves, he realizes, OK, this is it and he makes his stand, protecting the herd that has given him meaning and belonging for all of his life.  It’s one last thing for his herd. Would that we were that bull, embedded in the herd.  Instead most of us die without being surrounded by a sense of belonging, without being able to make a final contribution to the collective with how we die.

I imagine that aging bull as dying a good death.  Most of us humans just die. There’s a difference.