Aging Thoughts: Different Energy

It is a cliché to say that as we get older, especially after age 65 or 70, we lose some of our physical energy. Our joints and disks have less padding and we can suffer chronic pains from surgeries we had (or didn’t have) or just from normal wear and tear on various muscles, nerves and organs.

Our bodies stretch in the wrong places and our patience with other people shrinks. Some muscles become too tight while others become too loose. Although our fingers and toes can become numb, things still manage to “get on the nerves” that remain alert.

Yet this apparent loss of energy may be a blessing.  As we reckon with and grieve over what we are no longer able to do, or not able to do as well as we once could, we also have the opportunity to “fall upward” into what Richard Rohr calls “the second half of life.”

This period of life, which can be entered anytime (usually after age forty) is a time when, if willing, we can begin to release the strivings, desire for control and what Rohr calls “the merit-badge thinking” that usually marks our early adult years. We can, he says, become “soul drawn instead of ego driven.”  We can get our spiritual head on straight.*

This possibility has become more intriguing to me as I have now entered that time of life when I am told “don’t lift anything over fifty pounds, ever,” and when I (who used to be able to jog 6.2 miles in an hour) now tire after a twenty-minute one-mile stroll.

It is time, Rohr would tell me, to get busy finding my “True Self,” that part of me that contains the reflection of divinity that Jesus told us we all have.  I need to “embrace contradictions and tragedy as part of the growth” during this time of my life. The contradictions are clear enough in our current bitterly polarized political life in this country and we have COVID-19 as our current national tragedy.

The intellectual and psychological isolation caused by both of these realities, when added to the normal frustrations of being in one’s seventies and being a secret member of control freaks anonymous, makes me more than just a little eager to find that “God within” that is supposed to bring us a working awareness of the “good, true, and beautiful” and a measure of inner peace.

I am ready for a different energy in my life, an energy that will allow me, in the words of that great contemporary wisdom teacher-musician David Bowie, to understand that “aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.”

I want to know “the Truth that will make me free” and be able to “love without counting the cost.”  There are other cliches I could cite, but you get the idea. I want to be more compassionate and less self-centered.  I want to be open-minded, but not so much that “my brains fall out,” as someone once said.

Aye, “that’s the rub,” said Shakespeare.  These are all just ideas, found in my head rather  than in my day-to-day life. To tap that different energy and peace that I now desire I must somehow allow my good, intellectual intentions, to show themselves in my daily behavior.

Perhaps I should give the aforementioned COVID, the cause of much suffering in our world now and for months to come, a second thought. Could it offer me a way to enter Rohr’s second half of life? After all, Rohr says that “necessary suffering” is one of the prompts for this journey.

First, COVID has removed many of the “distractions” that had filled my life.  My wife and I no longer travel, except to Nashville or Paducah for medical appointments or to buy cheaper supplies at the big box stores.  Our motor home is slowly aging in our driveway. We rarely leave the house, even recently ordering meals and groceries for pick-up or delivery.  Neither our church nor my Trivia game group meets in person. No more Tuesday lunches with my fellow retired geezers. Very few friends visit. Even our children are wise enough not to travel to see us during the worsening pandemic.

All this gives me more time to think about who I want to be when I grow up spiritually. And, by the way, the word “distractions” is in quotation marks because real distractions come from the outside; usually external things that distract us, like a barking dog or r screaming child. My distractions were internal, things that I somewhat obsessively thought I had to do, like dishes or garbage disposal or cutting grass, which are, while necessary, also good ways to avoid the hard work of serious self-examination.

Second, by curtailing external distractions (meetings, lunch dates, Trivia games) COVID has made me more aware of the internal, self-created “distractions,” COVID has made it harder for me to avoid more serious tasks, like writing this self-indulgent essay.

You could say, to use a currently fashionable word, that I am becoming more mindful, at least somewhat.  I used to confuse this term with meditation or other forms of deep quietude, which I find difficult.  I now understand that mindfulness really just means paying attention to what you are doing when you are doing it. Not daydreaming, something I did in my early grade school years.

When there is less to do each day in Coronaville because many stores, restaurants and other public establishments are either closed or hotbeds of the virus spreading among unmasked patrons, it is a bit easier to be mindful at home.

Just where this emerging, small dose of mindfulness will take me is uncertain. So far, my attendance at what Flip Wilson called “the church of what’s happening now” is, strange as it might seem, allowing me to accomplish a bit more.  This may be because now, when I am washing dishes or doing rudimentary “first boil the water” cooking, I am thinking about what I am doing instead of worrying about what I “should” be doing instead of washing or boiling.

A second benefit of my COVID semi-isolation is a slightly greater (notice how I am hedging my bets here) tendency to let things go that I would have ruminated over in the past. I think that I may be slowly becoming less obsessive. So what if there are leaves to be raked or clutter to be organized. I can now say (some of the time), I will get to it when I get to it.  If it still bothers me, I can follow my physical therapist’s advice and take my twenty-minute daily walk. My wife might question the existence of this particular benefit, but I can say that I do think it helps.

While I must honestly say that I have only taken a baby step or two towards what Rohr calls the second half of life, I am hopeful that these steps will eventually take me to a different place emotionally and spiritually.

In the final analysis, both the diminished energy that comes with age and things like the Corona virus can help us open the door to a new kind of energy, a quieter, less driven energy. When one does try to live in the present psychologically, it can be liberating. It can help us do what we can, where we are, and do it calmly.

That is my hope. Wish me grace!

*_{For more on this, see my earlier blog posts,  “Aging Thoughts: Richard Rohr” or, better, read Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (2011)}