The Beauty of Your Ageless Spirit

When my emerging older self first showed up

No matter how you cut it, there are only three ways to go, you either die young, you die in middle age or you die old.  I've always said I was going to live to 100 but I'll admit that I never really thought about what that actually meant until recently. Once I hit my sixties I began to think about what it means to live to be one hundred years old and I'll have to say it has given me pause.  Not the pause to stop doing my work and giving my gifts to the world, I'll always do that, but it has made me stop and think about three things.  Number one, who will be there with me, number two, what I will look like, and number three, how will I feel about being that old?

I first noticed the shadow of my older self in the pictures from my daughter's wedding two years ago.  In the picture to the left, the taller one is Julie, the bride, and the other two are Mandy, my other daughter, and Ellie, my granddaughter. I'm the one in the periwinkle.   I noticed in these pictures that I did not look the way I still saw myself.  I kept thinking, who is that woman? I could see that I had entered a new era in my life, one I was not sure I was ready for, but as they say in the old childhood game of hide and seek, "Coming, ready or not."  I knew, of course, that I was no longer a young woman, but up until this point, I had always looked younger than I really was.  But now I could see that youthful looks would no longer carry the day.  I knew that if I wanted a positive, passionate, and meaningful second act, then I had better get busy figuring out how to make it as meaningful and purpose filled as my first act had been.  That's when I finished my book and began the process of reinventing my life. I also started looking for other people who had a new take on the second act of life.  

Looking For Mentors and Role Models  

In most cases, in order to feel motivated to go out into the world and do something outside the dictates of the mainstream, we require some role models and mentors to show us the way.  If at this point in time no one had ever lived to be one hundred years old then I would not be thinking I could do it.  But stories about people who are celebrating their 100th birthday are becoming common - I've even seen some birthday cards for this demographic at the local market.  But if all these stories were only about used up old farts living in nursing homes, slumped over in a wheel chair drooling, then I would certainly not be seeing this as the future I wanted to have.  So for me the stories that inspire are those of people who are living independent, active lives, engaged in some kind of passionate and productive work.  This work, whether it is paid or unpaid, gives their lives meaning and this is what makes their age just a number.  These stories are about people who live meaningful lives, who do not spend their time thinking about and worrying about aging.  They are simply too engaged in life for that.

This is Not Denial - It's Passion For What You Are Doing

When people have passion for what they are doing and what they are doing accomplishes something of value to the world, regardless of how big or small it might be, or whether they get paid to do it or not, then they simply have no mental energy for thoughts about getting old.  Do you think Frank Lloyd Wright was thinking about his age when he was building one of his most famous projects - the Guggenheim Museum - when he was in his late 80' and early 90's?  Now of course, I was not in his head and don't know for sure, but my educated guess is that he was thinking about his project and making it perfect.  The Guggenheim was opened on October 21, 1959, a few months after Wright died on April 9, 1959 at the age of 91.  He was was fully involved in his profession until the day he died.  Or what about Clint Eastwood, who just finished directing the movie, Jersey Boys at the age 84 and he's been at it all along.  But these are famous people, not all of us are famous or even want to be, but that does not mean that we cannot live a passionate life with meaning and purpose until we move on from this earthly plain.  When you get up every morning with something to do that is meaningful, productive and useful to society, then you don't have time to think about your age.

When You are 100 Your Face Will Tell Your Story

Make it an Interesting and Meaningful One 

Abraham Lincoln once said that by the time you're forty, you will have the face you deserve.  Of course in Lincoln's day forty was pretty old and no one had plastic surgery or got Botox injections and so a forty year old face represented the natural result of how a person had live up to that point in time.  What I would say now is that you will have the face you deserve when you're about fifty maybe even sixty since improvements in health and other ways of life maintenance have come into play since he made this comment. By fifty, and surely by sixty, it all starts to settle in and who you are simply shows up on your face and body for all the world to see.  But what I have noticed is that if you live a positive, proactive and passionate life then that face will show an ageless spirit in spite of any wrinkles, sags or heaven forbid, laugh lines.

But, let's get back to living to be one hundred years old.  Of course, at one hundred years old you won't look the way you did in your high school yearbook picture.  You will indeed have some lines on your face telling the story of your life, like a beautiful antique piece of furniture that has been kept in good working condition and is continuing to be used for whatever purpose it was designed for. Or, it could be that like an old piece of furniture no one cares about any more and is no longer being maintained, you could end up on the junk heap of life looking old and haggard.  To me that 's what people living in nursing homes look like. Well, we are all like that piece of furniture, we need to be kept up, maintained in good working order - working being the operative word - and be doing what we were designed to do.  Humans were designed to think, be creative and make contributions to the world via their thinking, creativity and doing. We were designed to contribute our piece of the great puzzle of life.  It's that simple.  We were not designed to sit around after sixty-five and grow old and useless.

Perpetual Vacations Are Not Good for the Soul or the Face

The way the culture sees aging at this point in time however, is that your work until sixty-five and then go on a perpetual vacation and deny your aging.  But a life focused on pleasure, comfort and security and making no contribution to the world will in the end do the very thing most people who choose this fear; decline, dementia and disorders.  And of course, this will show on the faces of these folks sooner, rather than later. But if you choose instead to live a life doing passionate work then you will express a spirit that will shine through the wrinkles and creaky joints.  People who interact with you will see the passion and the life in you and will ignore or not even notice the sags and wrinkles.  Instead they will be captivated by your authentic self and will see only the beauty of that spirit.  Authentic, passionate people will be experienced as ageless, timeless and full of life regardless of their actual age

The Beauty, Vitality and Ageless Spirit of Grace Lee Boggs 

I recently watched a PBS documentary on Grace Lee Boggs a 99 year old activist living in Detroit.  She is my new role model for aging, not just gracefully, but purposefully and with passion, purpose and possibilities. She is currently involved in helping revitalize some of Detroit's abandoned neighborhoods.  Here s a link to a Facebook page about her.  https://www.facebook.com/americanrevolutionaryfilm

So the future of your old, and mine as well, is for us to watch what we say about it, who we associate with, how we live and what we talk about.   All the jokes and little emails we all get about getting old may seem funny at the time, but they do not serve us.  Moving into age segragated neighborhoods where people are on perpetual vacations may look good on the surface but do not serve an engaged and meaningful existence. Making self deprecating remarks about your age creates a pathway in your brain that says I'm getting old and it's going to be awful.  Instead you need to welcome your emerging older self and get busy doing some re-invention planning for your future life.  If you don't have a passion now, or don't know what it could be then you are ripe for my Re-Invention program.  I have come up with a 12 week program that will help you delve deep into your psyche and discover the passion that is buried down there somewhere.  See my website at www.lorrainebanfield.com for more on my Re-Invention program.

As for me, I've decided not to worry about what I will look like at 100 years old, and as for who will be there with me, well this blog and my other work is my attempt to get some people on board with my ideas so I will have companions on the path, and the physical, well, I have creaky joints even now but I notice that when I am busy with my passion of writing and speaking on my topic - authentic soulful living - well all that just disappears and my spirit takes over and it just doesn't matter.

Blessings, Lorraine