In reading articles about aging populations one tends to smile at both the young and old in trying to address the issues, for instruction and action. What words do the writers use to refer to their elders? The elders themselves seem uncertain about what term or terms they prefer. One is almost tempted to avoid addressing the concerns and needs of the elders because of the nature of the context that requires withdrawal and focus on endings. We attach so much of political correctness to public life that we may omit important information about what ought to be done. On earth, the aged belong to their families.
The problem is partly intensified because the more youthful generations have taken over the culture and diluted the meaning of life pilgrimage and the elder society. We know from social studies that elders generally have a rather effective outlook on life; have reduced expectations; have increasing health problems – and so the story goes. That has always been true, even when seniors were proud to be elders, and available to younger generations for infrastructure blessing, orderly life and family love.
Modern writings on this issue are, in some instances, awful. The elders are seen as dependent, not on God, but on social laws that isolate them in comfortable loneliness, separated from family and life activity. They are to be cared for, even if only to fall to Alzheimers, cancer, or natural death. Writers facing the end are sometimes angry, sometimes simply silent, sometimes falling to secularism and endings – death with nothing to follow. An increasing number of persons argue for assisted suicide to manage the impasse. Some laws have been approved in states for such service. What a dark prognostication for the human race, and that in the name of mercy and medicine. Doctors trained to save/improve life are asked to help end it.
At this elder age I am grateful for my faith and education. The classics were important to my higher education, and they became some measure of what I currently believe. The ancients may have given us some of our best literature on the matter of aging. Cicero addressed it well. He wrote a piece entitled, in translation, Aging Well. He painted an ideal picture of the aging person in a dialogue. Dialogue was a favorite writing style among the ancients. We have it in Plato, and others likely warmed by Plato’s methodology. Cicero acknowledged the decline in old age, but urged the study of living that earlier generations failed to engage, taken as they are with current interests. He believed that greatness is not achieved by speed in time or strength as in an athletic body, but found in the fruits of thought, character and judgment [wisdom]. Necessary qualities improve with age, if they are permitted attention. Cicero saw the passions of youth as cause for many problems. Once persons can get over those drives, gain control, they find their better self. The satisfactions of the soul/mind become greater than all the experiences and drives of the past. Cicero felt that whatever was negative in the aged was found in their youthful years. He related them to faults of character not faults of the aging process. And good early means good late. As long as persons can live up to life meaning, they ought to live on with dignity. Cicero agreed with Pythagoras that God controlled matters, so do not: desert life until God, our Commander, has given the word. What nature gives us is a place to dwell in temporarily, not to make our own. It is interesting that we tend to treat earth as our own, and heaven as a dream. In point of fact heaven can become our own.
We are tempted to wonder if some of the Roman and Greek writers did not have vital passages of the Old Testament, and we know they did have the New Testament in the early decades after Christ. The work of Christ on earth was to address expressly the concerns of mankind – decline to death, and death itself. With the never ending growth in Christian life experience to righteousness and prayer service, the aged have the experience of shucking off the imperfect for the perfect in God’s kingdom. For those in God’s care, there is a rallying call: Thy Will Be Done. The move away from family solidarity that included the aged, and gained some care and benediction from the aged, may be at an unbelievable cost in the development of the younger generations growing old. The pattern of God for the family versus separation of persons who ought to be in close fellowship has spiritual overtones and meaning for gain or loss. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020