Once when something was hurting and I was tired and sore, and I was afraid I was getting old and dying, as happens to me in the night sometimes, a friend, Mary Muncil, a spiritual counselor and minister and blogger, challenged me to imagine being a healthy older man. This shocked me. I had no way of imagining such a thing, I said, our culture doesn’t offer any such image. I was not supposed to buy a farm in my 50’s, acquire animals, survive winter, get divorced, or find love. So I’m not exactly in anybody’s mainstream image. Then I remembered that I am a writer and a photographer and I ought to be able to create this image myself. And I do believe the imagine we have of ourselves affects our health in many ways.
Mary suggested meditation as a good place to begin the process. Go deep, and project the kind of older man I wanted to be. Maria gets angry when I refer to myself as old, or even older. Don’t do it, says Mary.
It’s hard. In our society, older people are supposed to downsize and disappear, as their buying time is short and they are not worth the time of Corporate America’s media and business structure, except when it comes to money, health, assisted care, medications, diapers, peeing or erectile dysfunction. What kind of images do we see of older men? They are walking to fantasy doctors (smiling, patient men with white coats who are not in any offices I’ve seen) to open up in confidence about their erections. Or they are getting prostate pills or diapers to deal with urination. Or they are talking to their doctors about colon cancer, heart disease, or hip and other body part replacements. The only big business older men attract are pills and procedures. I watched a baseball game recently and could not believe the worried older men in the ads rushing to doctors about bad eyes, sore legs, water retention and blood pressure. They always end up smiling. (They always end up paying._
And I love the warnings: consult our doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours (oh, happy days!) or grow the head of a Golden Retriever.
These ads are demeaning and exploitive. And if you think about them, they are insane. They are all about money and advancing the idea of aging as being about submission and decline. And drawing men into a cycle of pills, tests and expense. How do you feel healthy when you are doing that? In the past few years I have taken none of the many pills or tests my doctors always urged me to take and do to prevent debilitating illness. I always left these offices feeling frightened and disturbed. And unhealthy. I am on no medications and have done none of the things they suggested, and I am healthier than I have ever been and still working on it.
So I am imagining the healthy older man. He is active. He has purposeful work. His creative power is just emerging. He has learned something about life. Some of his bad genes are finally dying off. He can find love and sex just like anyone else. He can change and grow and create. He is learning about nutrition. Shopping and eating carefully. Evolving (no more caffeine and not much alcohol is great prostate medication for many people and you do not grow the head of a Golden Retriever. No doctor ever mentioned it to me) He does not define his life by pills, doctor’s visits or health. Meditation slows the heart and calms the soul. The right shoes matter.
The healthy older man takes several walks a day. He has friends he loves. He is open and curious about the world. He does not squawk about the good old days, believe the world has gone to Hell, or bitch about the young. He does not imagine himself falling apart, but enjoying a part of life, sharing some wisdom, helping the young when he can. He tells his story, just like anybody else. He understands that he and his body are changing and that he needs to accept that, not panic about it. And he does not turn his life and death over to insurance companies, doctors and pharmaceuticals who pretend to care about him, but clearly, do not. He finds people who do care about him, and who help him to feel healthy, body and soul.
Many people suffer all kinds of serious illnesses and misfortunes, and they need doctors and insurance companies for sure. And the healthy older man is well aware that he may experience that as well. But there no image of him anywhere out there in the world, no ad that will ever show him walking his donkey or herding his sheep, no pill meant for him to buy, no diaper for his life. So I have to imagine my own healthy life. And how lucky for me that I can.