Aging: Senescence as Creative Inspiration
[Exploring Life] It is strange to contemplate aging. The process of getting older often seems so gradual as to be imperceptible. The idea of getting older can create a sense of discomfort since the very mention of it requires us to come into closer proximity with the reality of our own impermanence. We have an understandable but unfortunate tendency to avoid sources of discomfort, even when we secretly know that moving through the nucleus of that discomfort would invigorate our very experience of life. It is sad to be held captive by fear and dread in the face of an unavoidable reality that we all must experience. We cannot change the presence of aging in our lives, nor can we determine exactly how it will reveal itself, but we can decide how to orient ourselves to it. Aging and the inevitable physical deterioration that it reveals offers an essential of creative inspiration for living a vibrant life.
Senescence is a term used to describe the physiological changes that naturally occur in the body as we age. More specifically, senescence is the science of the range of physiological changes that lead to functional decline with age. As the biological resilience of our body begins to wane, we become more susceptible to disease. In this sense, aging means that we become more vulnerable and fragile over time. There is a deeply primal sense of poignancy in senescence. It is only natural that we would feel distress in realizing that we will all unavoidably experience physical deterioration. Turning away from an emotion in avoidance is a sure way to harbour pain and suffering within. Our task is to move directly into the physical, mental and spiritual distress inherent in senescence so we may experience what it has to offer.
The Feeling of Senescence: One of the challenges with aging is that its effects are often so subtle and gradual initially that they escape our attention. For example, we don’t really know when the body physically changed from growth to decline. At some point in that statistical generalization we refer to as “mid-life” perhaps we begin to notice some early signs of physical deterioration. Early in life our bodies were constantly growing and physically expanding to participate and interact with the world. Later in life we experience the withdrawal of the body and the natural deterioration of our physical and sensory abilities. This natural withdrawal and physical decline is an essential phenomenon of all life; all life experiences aging in some manner. If we tend to view the trajectory of aging as a narrative of sadness and loss, then we sentence ourselves to living out our lives trapped in a bog of fear and anxiety. We cannot control the progression of senescence, but we can decide on how to orient ourselves to it. The natural deterioration of the body is really a source of inspiration for living a vibrant, creative, and fulfilling life.
As we get older we initially begin to notice subtle changes in our perception. Our eyes may not be as responsive as they once were. Our sense of hearing gradually dulls and higher frequency sounds become more elusive. Our skin begins to lose nerve efficiency resulting in reduced responsiveness to external stimulus such as heat and cold. We no longer touch the world with quite the physical sensitivity we once had. Our physical vitality begins to retreat and our body is slower to recover from intense activities. Physical coordination begins to wane while more and more little accidents seem to occur. We also begin to notice changes in our physical appearance as time begins to reveal its subtle influence on us.
The feeling of senescence is the gentle caress of deterioration, decline, and withdrawal. This is not a description, it would seem, that inspires creativity and vitality. It feels bleak and uninviting. More to the point, senescence is the physiological dimension of two essential truths about all life – impermanence and inevitability. The physical reality of aging means that impermanence is literally flowing through us and is a reality of living that we have absolutely no control over. Our body, quite naturally, feels afraid and uncertain as it becomes more and more aware of its own mortality.
The Bodymind of Senescence: What happens in the mind has an immediate reverberation in the body, and what happens in the body has reverberation in the mind. The term bodymind is used to describe this essential interplay of body and mind. If we feel our body aging, then that feeling of deterioration, decline, and withdrawal echoes in our thoughts. I do not mean this in a literal sense, that is, we feel something in our body and create a literal representation of it in our mind, though that can happen. There can be a subtle presence of decline within our minds that influences all kinds of thoughts and ideas, while the origin of that presence lies within the body. In a sense, physical sensations in the body have the power and potential to permeate the entire content of our mind.
The content of our mind is ultimately a personal decision. How we choose to orient ourselves to the world around us is also a personal decision. Sometimes, however, we find it easier to abdicate personal responsibility in the face of difficult emotional content emerging within. To be sure, some emotions are very unpleasant and mercurial, but in the end they all have a role to play in our lives. They also have something to reveal to us, something to teach us about life. Emotions are, in a sense, mentors of the bodymind- even when they appear as shadow and darkness, they are requesting our attention and inviting discovery.
How we orient ourselves to the inevitability of aging – our own physical deterioration, decline and withdrawal – is a primary consideration in living a vibrant life. It is sad to witness elderly people who seem to mourn their own physical decline to the exclusion of other possibilities in their life. It is as if the deterioration of the body completely overtakes other possibilities of mind. In saying this I do not intend to make light of the emotional torrent that is inspired by the trajectory of aging. It is, without doubt, an immensely powerful and challenging experience. We are quite literally feeling ourselves retreat into directly into the very essence and embrace of impermanence. What is sad, however, is to spend so much mental and spiritual effort anguishing over that which is unavoidable and forgetting how to live.
The Spirituality of Senescence: In aging there is tremendous beauty and reverence. Many aspects of culture, however, do not inspire this principle. Culturally speaking, we lie to ourselves. We create delusions of youth. We associate mere appearance with essence. We alter the reality of an image with technological manipulation and deception. We obsessively exalt youth, more specifically a youthful appearance, which is both grotesque and psychotic. Few things are more repulsive than an older person who has undergone extensive facial reconstruction in order to preserve the façade of youth. They are, sadly, living a lie born out of their own fear, anxiety, and insecurity about their identity. We wear advertising campaigns and marketing slogans as if they held some kind of truth when they embrace nothing more than manipulation, deception, and delusion.
Aging gracefully is a fundamental spiritual direction in life. It seems to me that gratitude is an essential quality to embrace in this regard. When we learn to be thankful for what we have and what we have experienced in life, regardless of the trials and tribulations we have had to navigate, then we stand on the threshold of grace. And when we can extend that spirit of gratitude beyond ourselves and into the lives of those around us we pass through the threshold. To be certain, we continue to feel the painful and angst-ridden dimension of life, but we do not lose ourselves to it. There is no point of spiritual arrival when we are suddenly at peace and everything that happens is joyous. Spirituality is as much about finding our way through the darkness as it is celebrating the light. And of course, though it sounds painfully obvious, there is no light in the absence of darkness.
I look down at my hand and fail to recognize aspects of it. It is clearly more worn than I remember. The texture of my skin seems somewhat less resilient. A greater number of tiny wrinkles seem to be appearing. My hand looks older now, when I compare it to the memory I have been preserving. Aging changes how we remember. More than ever I now see the image of my father’s hand in the general shape as well as the texture of the skin. I now see a hand that has the first signs of senescence, the first signs that my own narrative of aging has been officially launched. And just how will I navigate this uncharted terrain?
Why is it we tend to see beauty in a birth, but fail to see beauty in death? There are obvious reasons for this of course. At birth we welcome a new presence into the world; at death we feel a crushing absence in the world. A normal birth does not invoke grief, while death ushers in a torrent of sorrow. We are joyous when a new being is brought into the world and we are distraught when a life is taken away from us. Perhaps this is simply the way it is, and we simply have to find our way through the rough spiritual terrain as best we can.
To spiritually embrace senescence we can try to find grace in our own physiological deterioration, beauty in the effects of our own decline, and love in the midst of our own withdrawal from the world. Thus we can explore and engage with our body, without dread or morbid attachment. We know that we have not been granted any specific kind of entitlement in life. Our narrative is mystery. We do not know how our years in this life will unfold, nor do we even know how many years will unfold. Senescence increases our proximity to our own mortality, which ultimately requires a spiritual response to negotiate the severe emotional unrest we experience along the way.
The spirituality of senescence means we intentionally invoke gratitude where we experience deterioration, grace in the midst of decline, and love when it is time to withdraw.