How Did I Get to Be 70 When I'm 35 Inside?: Spiritual Surprises of Later Life

By Linda Douty

Have the courage and curiosity to face the inner changes of aging—and learn how they can help you find meaning in your later years.

"I used to think that age sixty-five was the start of a slippery downward slope to the cemetery. But inside, I felt a surge of enormous energy, with the potential to approach aging as an uncharted adventure instead of a prison sentence."
—from the Introduction

Unlike other authors, spiritual director Linda Douty discusses the challenges and surprises of aging by talking about how you actually feel, not what you're supposed to feel. In a warm, down-to-earth voice, she offers a spiritually grounded method to adjust to the unexpected as you grow older. There is no one-size-fits-all here, but a variety of responses to the inner and outer transformations of aging and new ways of looking at them. She looks at surprises, welcome and unwelcome, concerning:
• Self-image • The physical body • Relationships • Spiritual life

Questions for reflecting on who you are in this period of your life—or who you would like to be—will help you live each day more purposefully and joyfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781594733239

Linda Douty

Linda Douty, a leading speaker on the topics of meaningful aging, personal growth and spiritual formation, is author of How Can I Let Go If I Don't Know I'm Holding On? and How Can I See the Light When It’s So Dark? She is a spiritual director, a contributor to Presence (the journal of Spiritual Directors International) and a dynamic retreat leader. She is on the faculty at the Academy for Spiritual Formation.

Book preview

Introduction

This is the book I have longed to write. The seed was planted one spring day while sitting in my favorite rocking chair, routinely checking the daily mail. The postman had delivered two significant envelopes; the synchronicity was both startling and just plain funny.

In one hand was my new Medicare card with its twin messages: yes, I was sixty-five, the official beginning of old age as recognized by the U.S. government; and yes, I was being given a raise, because my hefty health-insurance premiums would virtually disappear.

In the other hand was the edited manuscript of my first book, written at the ripe old age of sixty-four. The obvious paradox brought a smile to my face. In one hand was a symbol of the beginning of the end, and in the other the beginning of a beginning. I used to think that age sixty-five was the start of a slippery downward slope to the cemetery. But inside, I felt a surge of enormous energy, with the potential to approach aging as an uncharted adventure instead of a prison sentence.

Five years have elapsed since that memorable day. Unexpected events have challenged me physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve read a shelf-full of books telling me how to grow old gracefully—most of them with specific instructions on how to hold the appearance of Father Time at bay—eat like a bird, work out like an athlete, nip and tuck like a starlet, be incessantly positive, and stay busy. But those answers don’t fit the deeper needs of later life.

Because I have a stubborn tendency to view everything through rose-colored glasses, I made a firm decision to approach this stage of life with a smile and a shrug. But my body and my contemporaries were saying, Not so fast, Pollyanna—this ain’t all a bed of roses! So I decided to get real. After all, later life presents life’s grandest opportunity for honesty.

I began to notice other changes besides the obvious wrinkles. There were invisible issues underneath the visible ones—unspoken fears, unthinkable losses, deserted dreams, and a free-floating anxiety about how and when I will die—all spiritual conundrums that emerge as time grows shorter. In contrast, surprising satisfactions and unexpected pleasures were also a part of the package. New questions bubbled up: Did men and women differ in their reactions to aging? Did their faith journeys make a difference? Did their relationship with God change? How did awareness of death affect value systems, not to mention their relationships with themselves and others?

In the work of spiritual direction—both receiving and giving in this special relationship—I’ve found that the spiritual self is inseparable from the physical body, the workings of the mind, and behavior in the workplace, the home, and the world. Every thought, action, and life event has a spiritual component. So no matter whether the name of God is mentioned or not, the Spirit moves through our lives and, I hope, through the pages of this book.

I decided to get outside my own head to see what others were experiencing. Over a period of a few months, more than fifty articulate seniors agreed to respond to some pretty nosy questions (with a guarantee of confidentiality, of course):

•   What has surprised you most about aging?

•   Is there something about growing older that you’ve never said out loud?

•   What have you discovered about yourself that you didn’t know before?

•   How has your image of God changed as you age? Your thoughts about life after death?

•   What dreams have you buried?

•   How have you coped with physical limitations without becoming boring or bitter?

•   What has been your greatest challenge in aging? Your greatest joy?

•   How old do you feel inside? How old are you outside?

I encouraged them to express what they actually felt, rather than what they were supposed to feel. The discussions sparked by these questions produced such intriguing insights that I scrapped my original outline and started over. My usual approach to writing had been to decide what I wanted to say, organize a structure (table of contents), and then flesh it out. But these folks between the ages of seventy and ninety-nine kept giving me answers that I didn’t expect, and it soon became obvious that there was no one size fits all, even within the same gender. Their ideas about aging were as unique as their personalities. Threads of wisdom began to emerge from their thoughtful reflections. To be honest, this is the first time I have allowed a book to be born on its own terms without my micromanagement.

The word surprise kept inadvertently popping up in our conversations. As the interviewees talked about things that surprised them, I began to get in touch with what was surprising me in my own process of aging. Along the way, I was reminded that the word surprise is essentially neutral. It doesn’t always carry the aura of delight normally associated with the concept. It merely means unexpected. You can be surprised by an inheritance from Aunt Gertrude or by a cancer diagnosis during a routine physical exam.

The maturing process itself carries this same kind of unpredictability. As in all of life, there are at least two sides of the coin. On the one hand, the body’s natural decline begins to show itself. On the other hand, a growing sense of self makes your appearance seem less important. Here’s a side of another coin: there may be a loss of identity when familiar roles fade. On the other is the bonus of no longer having to rush to the office to make a buck or rush to get the kids to school. In this book, I’ll look at both sides of the coin of aging—stark reality as well as optimism.

Here’s the way the book unfolds: Before we can reflect on the significance of surprise, a certain degree of openness is essential. So, chapter 1 deals with the courage necessary to notice surprises. It suggests ways we can accept and flow, rather than resist and congeal.

The first group of surprises centers around the emergence of the Authentic Self, as we let go of the burdens of the younger self-image—baggage that was packed for us by parents, culture, media, and religion. Next we’ll explore surprises that the body presents, those we can control and those we can’t. Relationships change also, as children grow up, friends move away, and the old roles no longer fit. Surprises in the realm of the sacred deal with the impact of religion and faith on this stage of life. The final three chapters report on the specific challenges, gifts, and wisdom passed along from these seasoned seniors to you, the reader. So this won’t be a book about how you ought to grow older, but rather a candid report on what it’s really like and some new ways of thinking about it.

Look at it this way: No one has ever won the fierce battle against aging, though many a skirmish has been fought. But the meaning emerges and the fun begins when you put down your sword.

Linda Douty

Memphis, Tennessee

Opening to Surprise

Every tomorrow has two doors; we can enter through the door of resistance or the door of growth. The first is fueled by fear, the second by faith.

What have you noticed about your aging patients?" I asked with interest.

The three doctors of internal medicine paused thoughtfully before they responded. There were two men and one woman, ranging in age from forty to seventy, all with a large number of elderly patients in their thriving medical practices. I knew they would have years of experience in observing a host of reactions from actual patients, so I invited them to share their collective wisdom about aging. In exchange for my guarantee of anonymity for them and their patients, they agreed not to sugarcoat anything or pull any punches.

Two Doors

As they offered opinions and stories, some common themes began to emerge. One doctor summed it up in these words: It’s like this, he began. As people age, they tend to move in one of two directions, one that looks backward and one that looks forward.

That’s too simplistic, his colleague insisted. I think it’s as if one group is invested in the status quo and holds on to the familiar. The others let go of what isn’t working and are willing to change, even if they don’t know exactly what that change is going to look like.

I urged them to be more specific. How do those two directions look in the lives of real people? What are the signs that someone is moving toward one path or the other? Their descriptions were revealing. Challenging, too. (I wanted to do a quick self-inventory to see which doorway I was heading toward.) Of course, most of us share a mixture of these two directions. Maybe on an up day, we tend more toward growth; on a down day, we might have our feet stuck in resistance. Still, we probably show dominance in one of these two basic points of view.

Door One—Resistance

•   Those who repeatedly refer to the good old days.

•   Those who are unwilling to consider ideas that differ from their own.

•   Those who seem categorically opposed to change, championing the status quo.

•   Those who whine and complain, wanting medication to fix whatever ails them—right now.

•   Those who are unwilling to examine old patterns of communication and behavior.

•   Those who are unwilling to examine their religious beliefs and deal with reasonable doubts.

•   Those who tend to take advantage of physical limitation, making it an excuse not to grow.

•   Those who are set in their ways.

Door Two—Growth

•   Those who are curious about learning.

•   Those who are eager to discover who they truly are, apart from cultural expectations.

•   Those who are committed to more honesty in their relationships.

•   Those who challenge old patterns to test their validity for the present.

•   Those who accept what is, rather than complain about it.

•   Those who can adapt to loss and are willing to change their lives in harmony with their change in circumstances, look honestly at what they are holding on to, and identify barriers to their own growth.

•   Those who find the courage to tackle the work of letting go.

•   Those who move from the tyranny of I ought to to the freedom of I choose to.

The doctors agreed that the pattern of loss and gain weaves its way through the entire aging process and needs to be confronted consciously. Studies show that folks who age in healthy ways are more realistic about the staggering array of late-life losses, which range from the trivial to the tragic. They intentionally nurture their souls and develop new skills to deal with the inevitable changes honestly. They stare the losses and gains right in the face:

•   They bid goodbye to waistlines and say hello to wrinkles.

•   They lose people they love through death and divorce and have to reinvent themselves without those relationships.

•   They retire from meaningful vocations and roles, facing the question, What now?

•   They discover their religious faith may be little more than a collection of habits and unexamined beliefs, and they want to experience faith as reality, not just religion.

•   They want to connect with their essential core—the real Me apart from the roles they play.

Will these conundrums break us open or break us down? Episcopal priest and author Cynthia Bourgeault describes our responses in terms of yielding or bracing when we are confronted with either a negative threat or a positive opportunity:

You will notice yourself responding in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist, or you will soften, open, and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the latter, regardless of the outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, divine being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost.¹

It’s easier to stay with safe, familiar ideas and behaviors than to risk the uncertainty of change. But in the stinging words of Austrian novelist Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: Old age transfigures or fossilizes.² The choice is ours.

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear

It’s hard to grow old in a culture devoted to staying young. One of the broad definitions of religion is whatever we pay attention to. If that’s true, then we’ve definitely made a religion of maintaining youth. What are the messages of our society that have become the accepted norm? From conversation to greeting cards, we are peppered with diminishing clichés that reflect common assumptions about aging. Though it’s fun to have a chuckle about the comical parts of the process, these seemingly harmless quips shape our attitudes more than we realize. Let’s put some of those current assumptions under a microscope to see how they sabotage our openness.

You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

Oh yes, you can. The students at the Meeman Center for Lifelong Learning at Rhodes College in Memphis, along with others in similar educational programs, have turned that cliché on its ear. One of my classmates at the center, a gentleman in his nineties, has explored everything from the life of Plato to life on Mars, and his insatiable curiosity keeps his brain in continuous motion. With no papers to write or exams to dread, seniors in this and other learning venues have the opportunity to unearth buried interests that were never given the time to flourish. Old dogs can indeed learn to weave, to speak Mandarin, to play the piano, and to peek into the fascinating world of quantum physics … and not for the purpose of accomplishing something. The pure joy of learning is delicious in itself. Besides, it’s invigorating to be around others who are discovering that same delight.

Age Is Just a Number

Try telling that to the arthritis in my right knee. The implication that age is merely a state of mind provokes all kinds of yes buts. Sometimes the power of positive thinking is one more expectation that weighs me down, yet I realize the importance of optimism. There’s a paradox here that must be owned. It is a both/and situation rather than an either/or.

Yes, inside I’m more myself, more capable of curiosity and a surprising youthful spunk. But on the outside, there are days when the number seventy feels appallingly on target. The truth is that most of the time I want to remain sharp and stimulating, and the energy rises to fuel that desire. But there are other moments when my body wants nothing more than a hot bath to soothe aching joints right before I burrow beneath a down comforter.

It has surprised me to what degree the number seventy affects the responses of others. Many treat me differently, sometimes dismissively, like I’m in parentheses instead of part of the paragraph.

An inkling of what was to come occurred during a conversation some years ago with a young man of about twenty-five. I don’t remember the face, but I remember the feeling. It was the first time I saw myself as an old lady. During our innocent exchange, his reply to me was a polite, Yes, ma’am. It stung. Part of me knew he was exhibiting proper manners in our Southern culture; another part of me wanted to punch him. I felt as if I were being dragged across a threshold before I was ready. Surely it wasn’t time for me to be considered elderly. My rebellious overreaction was quite a teaching moment. I was clearly more vulnerable to society’s hidden messages than I thought.

I reluctantly recalled the scores of women throughout my young years who had received the same designation from me, for I, too, was taught to address any mature woman as ma’am. I wondered if they had felt as insulted and categorized as I did.

Though the young man meant no disrespect (the opposite, in fact), his word touched a tender, fearful place deep inside me. Could it be that I was absorbing the ageism of our culture and pretending it wouldn’t one day apply to me? Before I could honestly embrace the joys of later life and tackle its challenges, I obviously had to make my peace with the truth: Mother Nature would not make an exception in my case. I, too, would grow old and die. A hopeful voice inside me mused, Surely we wouldn’t have been created to live this long, if there weren’t some crowning purpose in it.

My rebellious response to ma’am was a trigger that opened me to acceptance. Being viewed as elderly is difficult to accept, but it’s a fact. A healthy part of aging, it seems to me, is to accept all the attendant experiences, embracing both the thirty-five-year old who still lives inside and the seventy-year-old who hauls her around.

Time Is Short

Even that one carries its own set of caveats. The seniors I interviewed gave me wildly different takes on this point of view, depending on the lens through which they were looking.

Certainly, we’ve all had the experience of opening birthday cards and thinking secretly, Didn’t I just celebrate a birthday a mere month ago? The passage of days can feel like riding in a runaway car with broken brakes; we can’t seem to control the speed. Yet, how do those same days feel to someone who is chronically ill or in pain or is dealing with an empty house for the first time? Loneliness and sickness can lengthen the dragging moments into an endless tick-tock that brings life to a standstill.

Even so, we can