A Celebration!: Being Old In America

By Terry E. Jones

1. My age fifty was a time of review of who I was and what I had become. I realized the world had an expectation of retirement, withdrawal, disengagement for people beyond this age. However, I was still vigorous and creative, very much unwilling to pull back. Between ages fifty and sixty I decided on a new way of being professionally an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elderhood Institute
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692912973

Terry E. Jones

2017 was Terry's 46th anniversary of marriage and 2011 was the year of birth of Terry's eleventh grandchild. • Received Master's degree in History, 1970, Sonoma State U., California • Received Master's degree in Counseling, Lewis & Clark College, 1976 • Received Doctorate in Ministry, University of Creation Spirituality, 2005 • Founded EASE Inc., one of the first mental health-consulting firms to offer employee-counseling services to business and industry, 1979. Sold the company in 2009.

Book preview

Introduction

A celebration begins for me in knowing I am alive at 77. I have reached a goal I did not consciously set. I have already had a long life filled with stories, relationships, discoveries and challenges. Before I reached the second half of life, I would think about what was to come next. Today I live in the moment with little wonder about the next events of my life.

Between ages 40 and 50 we are seen in white, upper middle-class America to be at mid-life. At 50 we can join the American Association of Retired People. In our 60s we can begin collecting social security. In our 70s few young people would call us young.

It astonishes me how each of the decades of life past 50 brought me something unexpected. As a younger man, I developed a bias about the years past 60. On the rare occasions that I thought about it, I imagined that once retired from my work life, it was all about over. So I have been surprised to discover that as I grow older each decade offers a new adventure. Life has not ended. It keeps renewing.

For me, age 50 was a time of reviewing who I was and what I had become. I realized the world had an expectation of retirement, withdrawal and disengagement for people beyond this age. However, I was still vigorous and creative, very much unwilling to pull back. Between 50 and 77 I have remained capable of creating new projects and thinking of new ideas.

One man pointed out that being 60 was like being a senior teenager. He said he had everything that he wanted as a teenager, only 50 years later. He didn’t have to go to school or work. He got an allowance every month from the government. He had his own pad with no curfew. He had a driver's license and his own car. He had an ID that got him into bars. The people he hung around with were not afraid of getting pregnant. And he didn't have acne.

At 60 I found myself looking for an alternative to America’s idea of aging. Old people are denigrated in America. In my experience many find people over 60 to be bothersome, weak, and lacking in intelligence. Old people remind us of our mortality. Our judgment in the West is that death is a mistake and we try to avoid it as long as possible. Embracing death as a part of life, however, has deepened my appreciation of life. I needed a new paradigm for living at this age that did not look like something to fear. Retirement meant to me an increase in freedom, a rebuilding of energy and an avoidance of the traditional work world.

In my 60s I experienced an expansion of my philosophical understandings and a re-evaluation of my values. I reconsidered the eternal truths and the eternal values written about by philosophers. One of my discoveries was that this could be a time either of relegation or a time of celebration. It felt like the culture often wanted me to step back but I wanted something more and celebration of my long life was a possibility.

If the stages of my life are like the seasons of the year, then now, in my 70s is the end of Autumn and the beginning of Winter. My 50s and 60s were available for the autumnal harvest of my long life. Once that was well under way Winter arrived. My greatest fear now is being mortal, not because I will die soon, but because my body cries