Old and Satisfied

What a magnificent translation is this verse in the (New American Standard) Bible.  I make it my favorite treatment of this text, as I make various translations favorites for this or that passage of Scripture.  One great way to study the Bible is to compare translations.  Translators strive for accuracy, even if, on occasion, they miss points.  A translation will often miss something, so readers must do what can be done to press forward believing they have found the intended meaning through acceptable effort.  This verse captures the meaning, even if not all that might be included.  It describes my own feelings – for myself.  At my age, nearly 100 at this editing, one cannot avoid some thought of the closing of natural life.

Having gained advanced years, I find myself surprised that I did not know how pleasant the matter of old age can be.  We hear a great deal about the burdens of aging, especially as it relates to the decline of the body, perhaps in disease and suffering; and, the decline of the mind, especially relating to Alzheimer’s, once managed as senility, and not so prevalent as currently when there are more aged persons, and strident lifestyles.  I believe that we ought to accent the sense of dignity and elevation possible for most aging persons, certainly as Christians.  Studies show that there is a rather common gentle context for aged persons in the humanistic culture.  Society appears to be managing problems – formerly family duty.

Studies now show that aged persons tend to develop interests that ought to have been included to greater degree than they were in their younger years.  God, in nature, gave us our bodies.  Attention to nutrition, exercise and healthy mindedness carry more years for us with early applications.  We, together with the miracle of God, give ourselves mental preoccupations leading to action (conduct).  I think the way I do, in part, because I feel healthy, although I have had three bouts with cancer – among other major health issues.  An autistic person thinks differently than I do.  Different cultures, gender orientation, life circumstances, may cause persons to think differently than I do.  I believe I have what Scripture terms, a sound mind.

Age has something to do with the way one thinks, and elders should not back away from the better part of that orientation.  We learn that matured persons are more careful about work responsibilities such as taxing jobs, like aircraft control.  They are open to understand different points of view, and seem better at managing emotions than younger generations.  If they fail, they do not tend to follow repeat paths in risk taking.  Anger declines in the aging persons, so that those passing fifty years register greater happiness than those younger.  Sadness and fear decline from the dramatic earlier years.  In polls it was discovered that elders thought the last ten years of their lives were their happiest, and that they wished they had taken life each day at a time when they were young as they do presently.  This story might well be extended in this vein.  We now know that some factors in attentive grandparents would serve parents well.

Stereotypes of elderly persons are often wrong.  As magnificent as modern life is in providing opportunity for comfort, for services, for personal experience, it may fail to provide in advancing years a sense of human relationships practicing love, patience, involvement, and satisfaction related to personal peace.  The dramatic increase of young persons living alone, the decline in family parenting, the appeals of a silent independence, and various separating qualities (like the decline in acceptance of competitive life) suggest a different existence in the future for the aging population.  (Life on earth is not effective for sissies.)  The responses of broken families, and their children, are rather straightforward about the differences in their lives than from those who married wisely, and devoted consideration to their relationships for blessing and differences in families.  The loss of devotion, of loving contexts, of decline in time exchanges, of dreams and faith will make closing years of a person’s life less satisfactory than it ought to be – sometimes far less. I was touched, many years ago, when an older man expressed to me that he would like to have found with his aging parents what we had found with ours.  He had been well cared for as a child, but never perceived that he could complete the process by investing something of himself in them – at human life closure.