How to Know You’re Getting Older

How to Know You’re Getting Older

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Commentary by Pete Haug | FāVS News

You can always look at the calendar to check your age, but aging is more personal than that. For example, you suddenly realize that printed menus are less readable, even when you extend your arms, which seem to be getting shorter. They no longer stretch far enough to let you read that menu. Maybe the print has shrunk?

Congratulations! You’ve just noticed you’re getting older. Not everyone experiences this. I know an 83-year-old who has never worn glasses. She reads just fine, hesitates sometimes, but muddles through.

A few decades after most of us begin wearing glasses, close friends and relatives observe that “What?” is becoming our favorite conversational response. I was in my 70s when I got hearing aids.  I remember the shock of wearing them in the bathroom. Instead of a tinkle, I heard Niagara Falls! But I learned to ignore it. I’m now on my third pair, each fancier and more sophisticated. I now listen to music or audiobooks via Bluetooth.

Aging — A natural part of life

A lot of people don’t like to talk about aging and particularly the way it ends in death. I view aging as an arc, a beautiful rainbow (sometimes double, if I’m lucky), from horizon to horizon, a full arc across the sky, bringing beauty and hope. It symbolizes God’s promise to Noah that God will never leave humankind alone.

That’s comforting. It took me years to accept that promise, but when I did, I dropped a strong agnosticism and never looked back. I was 29. Now I look forward, both to living with increasing infirmities and to dying, when that time comes.

I find such thoughts refreshing and reassuring. On turning 87 this year, I became more interested in later life and what might follow. For example, octogenarians are at high-risk for COVID-19. On September 21 I felt a bit sniffly, so I tested. I positively had COVID-19. Eighteen months ago, when I had my first case, it manifested as a mild cold. This time it was longer and stronger, but still mild. I bundled and slept for a few days, temperature swinging between subnormal and low-grade fever as I recovered, little worse for the wear. (But I did miss my last FāVS column. Sorry.) 

COVID stimulated my thinking about aging and death. Hundreds of thousands have died from COVID. I considered myself lucky as I recalled some things I wrote last year about navigating the rainbow, the beautiful arc of life.

In the beginning …

We spend our first few decades learning how to live, to cope with a life vibrant, exciting and seemingly endless. Our early years are a total learning experience: eating solid foods, crawling, walking, talking, generally interacting with our expanding world. It’s exciting, frustrating at times, but mostly rewarding.

Middle age — which I’ll arbitrarily call 40 to 65 — is, for many, a time of familiarity. Habits suffice and we enjoy life’s “prime.” If things go well, we’ve developed a broad-based supportive family, not only of relatives, but of neighbors, friends and colleagues.

Approaching retirement, we discover we’re not so young as we once were. But we’re wiser. We revive and cultivate our childhood sense of discovery and wonder. We wonder, for example, “How in hell did I get here, and where am I headed?” We learn once more how to cope with a life that continues to change.

This is not the “second childhood” sometimes attributed to elders no longer capable of caring for themselves. This is the time to age gracefully, to nurture ourselves much the same way our parents nurtured us. We try to exercise wisely, watch our diets and include food supplements for balance. Just as our parents supported our growth and development; we now take responsibility for shepherding a healthy decline for ourselves. Eventually our children start to help, allowing us freedom to do what we still can, but supporting us as necessary.

For example, two years ago I saw that macular degeneration would no longer permit me to drive. Last February, after a mild stroke, my wife Jolie wasn’t able to drive for months. She now has recovered, but our family still provides transportation when she’s not feeling up to it.

What next?

That’s the exciting question. Statistically I have about three years of life remaining. In reality, I could live to 100 or die tomorrow. ‘Abdu’l-Baha explains, “As to the soul of man after death, it remains in the degree of purity to which it has evolved during life in the physical body, and after it is freed from the body it remains plunged in the ocean of God’s Mercy.”

Is it too late to clean up my act? My next column, if I’m still around, will explore why we can’t really understand that “ocean of God’s Mercy.”