GENUINE GROWTH

I keep seeing it and hearing it here and there-- just this morning in the newspaper, a woman of formerly youthful beauty, in the grip of metaselfishness does not appreciate her elder beauty; rather, she laments her "loss." "Who doesn't mind getting older?" asks her interviewer of the reader. I, for one. I have a lot more flexible fun now than I did when I was in my 20s and fun was bounded by all those constraints of image and ambition...

"Who doesn't mind getting older?" Might as well ask who doesn't mind being born, or being a child or an adolescent! Every age has its laments and regrets of passage that, in a life well lived, are more than offset by the rewards that come unbidden with genuine growth. If there is no true growth - as within as without - then one must bear increasing sadness at loss of joy that should have been.

But joy and pain, loss and gain give heart to every phase of the genuine life, without exception; it is a crime of the soul to believe otherwise, and an even greater crime to propagate that belief. I have found my elder age to be as deeply interesting and stimulating as I found childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, but less intellectually constraining, more spiritually satisfying and physically much wiser. That is the sparkle you see in a well-lived elder's eye.

All that ignorance under the bridge leaves you in a more spiritually youthful state of mind than you can have at an age that is younger merely in years. It is sad to see people fear to age. Might as well fear to grow. Every bit of a life, from birth to death, is by nature an adventure; who lives genuinely savors every heartbeat of that vital passage, the dark as key as the light, where losses are naturally salved by the lasting measures of pleasure and joy whence they arose.

And if you've genuinely lived, when it comes time to die, you simply step forward into the light as you always have.