by Warren Wolfe
Like many of you, as I grow older, I have found my life focus shifting inward.
After spending so many years building a career, taking up hobbies, nurturing a family, buying cars and houses, tending my health – the day-to-day process of living – at 75 I find that aging has been pulling me deeper into questions of what it all means.
I don’t sit around all day praying, meditating or studying great thinkers – although I am doing some of each.
But I am being drawn more and more to explore my spiritual life and values – a phenomenon that comes to many of us as we age. For me, it’s a journey into both religion and spirituality, and I’m finding it an amazingly rich and sometimes surprising experience.
While there can be a strong overlap between religion and spirituality, religion typically involves systems of belief in a higher being — in my case, the Protestant church of my parents that nurtured me through youth and into adulthood.
What does spirituality mean today?
Spirituality is more of a deep dive into the value and meaning of my life, questions of what sort of man I grew into, my value now that I no longer work for pay. With no children, what is my legacy? What is my role as I age? Can I do something to make the world a better place? How do I best use my time now? What will my life mean when I am gone – for that matter, what happens to the “me” when I die?
Writer Arn Bernstein said asking those questions often starts when we’re 45 or 50, “but there’s a screaming need for it when we reach 85 or 90.”
In addition to having parents who taught that questioning – not cleanliness – is akin to godliness, I was blessed to work as a newspaper reporter where my job was to probe deeper into what people think and feel. For more than 20 years I wrote about aging issues, interviewing older people who often described the joys as well as the pain of the aging journey.
Since middle age I’ve done some introspection. But my formative years and my work primed me to start going deeper when retirement brought more free time seven years ago.
I am a Woolly Mammoth, a men’s group we started 32 years ago to figure out who we were as middle-aged men. Now we’re examining who we are as we age. Through poetry, music, humor and lots of talking, we consider our mortality, legacy, our life stories, our deep bonds with our families, our forebears, our community, each other.
I was raised in the Congregational Church and later was a member of Presbyterian, Lutheran and Unity churches. I stopped attending church for a dozen years while my wife and I cared for our aging parents.
New roles in retirement
Since retirement, I have joined two churches, first a Presbyterian, and a year ago added a Unity church, where I do most of my worshipping. With the Presbyterian Church I remain a Stephen Minister – a caring listener to people going through difficult transitions. At Unity, I am a prayer chaplain offering a prayer after service every third Sunday with anyone who seeks it and praying daily over members’ written prayers.
Both of those experiences are opening me to deeper religious thought and spiritual awareness than I consciously expected. For the most part, I find myself not at all concerned about dogma and deeply drawn to the mystery – maybe the miracle – of being alive in this place at this time.
Volunteering has been another avenue of introspection, although I have learned to guard against overcommitment – a lesson I keep relearning. My top volunteer priority now is to drive my sister with MS to medical and other appointments. I also write weekly letters to an ICE detainee in a Minnesota jail; work with the Roseville Alzheimer’s and Dementia Community Team on monthly educational programs and an initiative to create dementia-friendly airports; co-facilitate a monthly group for former dementia caregivers charting a new life course; and monitor the Roseville Human Rights, Inclusion and Engagement Commission for the League of Women Voters.
Hundreds of other elders and my own experiences have taught me useful ways to explore the meaning and richness we bring to life.
What we can do now
We can:
— Write or tape our life experiences and lessons for our own benefit, and to share with children and grandchildren.
— Reconnect with old friends, mend fences with distant relatives, and offer words of thanks to those who have enriched our lives.
— Realize that healthy bodies and minds will add vitality as we age, so be physically active, learn new skills, engage in more conversations, invite a friend to lunch, be sure to vote, read a book, attend a concert.
— Volunteer for a good cause, a way to give back to our communities – but do what brings you joy and energy, not just the things others think you should do.
— Consider meditation, prayer and reading sacred texts of your own and other faiths. It can lead you on an inward journey, and it’s good for your body and brain. Join a group of older people who meet regularly – or start you own group to talk about spirituality, your life journeys, books or current events.
— Treasure your old age, be patient with yourself and others, accept the infirmities that will come if you live long enough, and consider your dying and death, write your own obituary, plan your funeral, consider having parties with friends to celebrate your lives — while you’re still alive.
There’s a common notion that wisdom comes with old age. But more, I think, advanced years bring a growing sense of gratitude, patience, compassion, savoring simple pleasures and realizing that what’s most important now might be health, family, friendships, contemplating the mystery of life, and knowing that it all had meaning. And that spiritual awareness, after all, may be the true wisdom of old age.