The popular media images of old age in our youth obsessed Western culture range from Depressing – it’s all downhill
“Last scene of all,(from Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man)
that ends this strange eventful history
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”
through Ageist and Alarmist – “Old people hang on far too long – they bed block, use scarce resources - are a drain on financial resources”
(Why doesn’t society stress the value of carers – who save the Scottish Government and our taxes billions a year – or acknowledge the value of loving grandparents – or all those past 65 who are good neighbours, skilled farmers and gardeners, volunteers?) to the slightly bitterly humorous Victor Meldrew “grumpy old man” or the female version “I will still be me and will of course have more time to do things when I retire – mind you if my husband is about the house I am not sure I want twice the husband and half the money!”
Do other agencies offer us any hope that we should expect old age to be creative? - Well - not much!
Medicine is focussed on making people better, helping cure disease, but you cannot cure old age (which is very upsetting for medics!) Our dis-ease at accepting the inevitability and naturalness of death as the end point of maturity is obvious, though the hospice movement has gone a long way to tackling this.
Psychiatry and psychotherapy rest firmly on the foundations of child development and attachment theory and surprisingly little seems to have been done to see if there are patterns of development, of disintegration or individuation that could be expected as normal in healthy old age. And it seems that few people over 65 are routinely referred for counselling or psychotherapy with the expectation of improvement.
Social work – much of this runs on Systems Theory and tries to help people adapt to the dominant society – to “fit in” to the system. Most intervention is in response to a crisis and having assessed the problem a solution is suggested perhaps a mobility aid or alarm call and with such coping mechanism in place, the case is then considered complete and set aside until the next problem arises.
Of course we know that Occupational Therapists do help old people flourish and function as well as possible at home or in care.
Could it be that faith groups, who all value spiritual insights and wisdom, could be the ones who best see old age as a time for growth? After all, the spiritual quest does not stop when we retire, in fact if we are lucky it hots up!
Participating in a recent workshop with Pilgrim Care in St Andrews Rev Peter Neilson told us a wonderful story that sums up the way the Christian faith can and should affect our perspective on old age. He went to visit a parishioner who was old and dying and asked her tenderly how she was. He got the wonderful reply:
“Well, I’m winding down… but I’m revving up”.
Living to a ripe old age is a gift, and of all the lifelong learning to be done, the pursuit of wisdom through the exercise of spiritual practices is an archetypal goal. The hope of finding fulfilment, of making sense of life in the light of faith is a creative task, one well suited to old age.
Mary Moffett
