Growing older gracefully

Growing old and/or growing up.

During September 2024 the focus on my attention, energy, and effort has been on exploring the older stages of life. In my Allnonfiction online book discussion group we have been reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and I have been co-facilitating a peer support group, Growing Older Gracefully, which has been meeting weekly for a period of twelve weeks.

In the Growing Older Gracefully Peer Support group we have been discussing the changes that we have experienced growing older physically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually.

The physical changes are the changes most readily apparent while the social, psychological, and spiritual changes are more subtle and culturally and lifestyle influenced.

The old saying is that “Growing older is not for sissies” and yet the period of roughly 65 - 75 are also called “The Golden Years”.

The social status of the seniors has changed significantly over the years both in the US and in other cultures around the world. In some cultures the aged are considered wise and revered and in other cultures they are dismissed, marginalized, put out to pasture, and ignored if not abused. The life expectancy in 1900 was 49 years and in 2024 it is 79. We now have two adulthoods, the period of 20 - 50 which is about mating and procreating and assuring the continuation of our species, and the period of 50 - 80 which is filled with existential angst about what do I do now. The first adulthood we are programmed by Mother Nature hormonally to assure the continuation, evolutionarily, of our species, homo sapiens. The second adulthood we are on our own with little if no help from Mother Nature about what will give our lives meaning, and purpose

For many people in the US growing older is something feared, and addressing the problems that come with older age are avoided and denied until there is a crisis of sorts when the lack of functioning and inability to care for oneself and meet one’s own needs can no longer be ignored.

Gawande writes in his book Being Mortal:

I wrote this book in the hope of understanding what has happened. Mortality can be a treacherous subject. Some will be alarmed by the prospect of a doctor’s writing about the inevitability of decline and death. For many, such talk, however carefully framed, raises the specter of a society readying itself to sacrifice its sick and aged. But what if the sick and aged are already being sacrificed—victims of our refusal to accept the inexorability of our life cycle? And what if there are better approaches, right in front of our eyes, waiting to be recognized?

Gawande, Atul. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (pp. 9-10). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. 

As a culture in the United States is there a better way that we can live the last years of our lives? How do you want to live yours? I am reminded of Ken Wilber’s comment about there being a difference between growing old and growing up. All living things grow old, including human beings. Human beings, though, being conscious of their own existence, have the ability to not only grow old, but to grow up.

What does it mean to grow up, to mature gracefully, to realize and actualize one’s own potential in a satisfying and fulfilling way that brings one to the end of one’s mortal existence with peace of mind?

Editor’s note: Every Sunday, David G. Markham substack will feature an article about the developmental stages of life.