I do not see myself as old, but getting older. In our culture, older people are not seen as sources of wisdom and guidance, but mostly as entitlement and health care issues and drains, aging being mostly about long-term insurance  problems and payments. Everywhere I go, every time I turn on the radio, I hear breathless programs about Medicaid, Medicare and the money it takes to grow old and die. Concerns about parenting, caretaking, medical technologies that prolong life but do not always improve it, insurance programs and premiums.

Yet I am finding something of a different path, and I hope to keep on it. The wonder of getting older is that you do learn things, you do know things, you do see things. You have made so many mistakes, gotten so many lessons, tried so many different things. I never offer my advice or experience to people, but I find that more and more, younger people find me, and sometimes I can help them – the true meaning of aging, even in our warped, anxious and greedy culture. Aging for me is not about being cared for or living forever, it is about entering a dignified, peaceful and meaningful time of life. I know things, I have a humor and perspective about the world now, I can offer something, be of real value beyond being cared for.

A young man I know told me he was suffocating in an awful job, his spirits and dreams being crushed daily. Could he change? Could he adapt? I am  young, he said, I it’s hard for people my age to change in an increasingly complicated world, and I am not an exception. Do I dare to change? I want to start my own business, work for myself. I have the money to try it, but it’s all I have and we will have to sacrifice for a good while..

I do not give advice easily. Smart people don’t need it, fools don’t take it. I told him he had to make his own decisions about life, I couldn’t make them for him. All I could say was that he ought not give his life away to the limitations and expectations of other people. Life is always filled with struggle and change, no matter what kind of job you have or who you work for. Life is complicated and the more complicated it gets, the more money they make. I have learned much from the world’s greatest educational system – life.

This man – he had done some work for me at Bedlam Farm – had asked me what a well-lived life is, and I said it was a life of self-determination. Of love and connection, dignity and freedom. Of courage, sometimes, it is never easy to buck the great system of fear that would dominate each phase of our lives – you need warnings to survive global warming and economic and environmental deprivation, you need health care, you need long-term health insurance, programs for disability, tests and pills for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, allergies, IRA’s to get you through the ravages of aging in America, computers and cell phones, antibiotics every time a tick bites you, warnings when it storms. It takes a lot of strength and purpose to wade through all of that and find your own spark and light in life.

All I could tell this man was to follow his own spark, his own light, before the world and its many greedy and fearful systems snuffs it out. It is a kind of death, I said, to turn your life over to the fears of others.

A few months after I talked with him, he e-mailed me to tell me he quit his job and took his savings and started his own business as a landscape designer. It is rough going, he said, but inch by inch, he is getting there. He will make it, he said. He has two trucks and three employees. He loves every day of his hard work.  He thanked me, he said, no one had encouraged him to do what he wanted. I am glad, I said, that it was me. Small miracles, I thought, for him and for me. I am teaching a writing workshop. I tutor people to start blogs and find their voices. I am good at it. I teach encouragement.

I think this man is getting to live a well-lived life. His wife and children will benefit from living with a happy and independent man. I am learning what getting older can really mean.