In meditation class today, we talked about the tendency in our country to forget the elderly, push them aside and out of their work, ignore their wisdom and experience, and elevate only the young to positions of leadership and authority. Few people seek out the elderly to learn from them and hear their stories.

Old people who tell their stories are ridiculed as foolish and tedious.

Young people who tell their stories are Tik-Tok Influencers, memoir writers, or movie producers.

For the elderly, there is one life to live, and when they have supposedly lived it, they are pushed to the fringes of life or made invisible and helpless. The outside world simply waits for them to die or disappear. And they know it.

They have nowhere to go with a lifetime of experience, wisdom, mistakes, and successes. They have so much to teach, so few pupils to learn or schools to invite them.

There is this idea that we make big decisions in our lives and that one or two d decisions would either save or ruin our lives forever, as if life were a great grandfather clock that ticked around once and could only repeat the hour, never change it. Aging is a stage of life; for many, the door of life is slammed around them.

For them, it’s considered over.

Few people feel that more acutely than those in memory or assisted care. My class and my mission are all about advocating rebirth and renewal. It doesn’t have to be over, not at any age, not until death.

Today, I gave a talk on second lives, and I read from our favorite author of Spring and Summer, Joan Chittister, who wrote, “The real truth, I have come to think, is that there is no such thing as having only one life to live. The fact is that every life is simply a series of lives, each one of them with its task, its flavor, its brand of errors, its type of sins, its glories, its kind of deep, dank despair, its plethora of possibilities, all designed to lead us to the same end – happiness and a sense of fulfillment.”

I’ve been reading to the Mansion residents for years, and I’ve never seen or heard any author hold the resident’s attention more fully than Chittister. If I could get any single human to come to the Mansion and speak, I would ask her. She has a way of capturing the trials and opportunities of aging in a way no one I know of has been able to do.

I’ve given every member of the meditation class her book, and I believe most of them are reading and loving it. They’ve never all asked me for any other author’s work. It’s not what I say; it’s that I show up.

I’m with Chittister. My life is all about rebirth and renewal, what Chittister calls a “mosaic made up of multiple pieces, each full in itself, each a stepping stone on the way to the rest of it.” 

I’ve had at least nine lives, I expect to have a few more.

This is what I told the residents this morning:

You all have learned so much on your march through life. Each of you is a distinct master of what it means to be alive. You learn to talk and work and cook and clean, and marry and partner, and mother and nurture. Many things you’ve learned in life are forgotten when you enter the care of others. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Some of you have brought me poems, songs, paintings, stories, dolls, recipes, memories, and wisdom. You have more lives to lead.

Unexpectedly, time begins to set in with a fury; there is only so much time left to pay what we owe.

Each period of life has its purpose; I told the residents, who were wide awake and listening. This one gives you a chance to process and think about all the others – a golden gift of aging. I said life’s purpose at this point is not simply to endure the coming of the end of time. It is to come alive in ways you have never been active before.

So this, I said, is your homework. Think about your purpose at this stage of life and how you will pursue it. We’ll all get to share our ideas next week and beyond. See you then. Let’s meditate – eight minutes today.