Old age has given me much more than it has taken away. Age has taught me that it is possible to reach too high, too quickly, too often in trying to make all of our projects and goals in my life succeed.
We don’t seem to know how to stop. Age teaches that, like it or not.
I was successful and thought it would make me happy. Mostly, it made me crazy.
The global economy, job layoffs, corporate greed, and the insatiable hunger of the wealthy made me a spiritual refugee in my own land.
I learned that when my ambitions succeeded, the quality of my life declined, almost in proportion. This was a great shock to me.
All of my life, I was told just the opposite: make money, work hard every day, never slow down, and never relax. I noticed that the successful often had their dreams shattered by their very success.
I was one of them.
In the land of billionaires, there is anger, hunger, fear, and misery everywhere, even I suspect, on those obscenely huge yachts.
In that sense, Joan Chittister writes, age is the antidote to personal destruction, the call to spiritual growth, love, empathy, and compassion.
Age did what no shrink could take me see, finally to the point where there was nowhere to go but inside for comfort, inside for money, inside for the things that matter most in life – life, community, meaning, the love of others than myself, a chance to make life a little easier for those who can’t do it for themselves.
While many gifts come from outside of us, true peace and happiness could only come from inside of me.
Age settles, even downgrades, and slows life in many ways. My passions and flaws—anger, jealousy, envy, pride, resentment—subside steadily. I began to awaken to another whole level of life.
This was the spiritual path, the interior life, the authentic life, the one in which I was finally in control and willing to change what needed change. I never took the time to do that when changing the money rainbow, which we are all taught to chase.
I finally took the time to understand how much these passions, flaws, ambitions, and fears had drained from my life.
I thought it was too late to change, but it is never too late. Age is a gift, not a perfect one, but a powerful one. I am not diminished, but have grown.
