Aging and the human spirit
The spirit is often called the soul, a life force from God. I prefer to think of it as a metaphysical entity without mental or physical qualities. To me, spirit is a necessary and vulnerable component of human life.
The spirit has two branches. One ascends from the here-and-now to ultimate values as sources of love, truth and justice. It allows us to transcend the self and its preoccupation with the moment to find value and hope in ordinary and extraordinary acts of loving. We organize our lives around this limb.
Entirely in daily life, the other limb fleshes out the concepts and beliefs we derive from ultimate values. It provides the basis for finding satisfaction in life and happiness in relationships with others.
Faith, trust, is the glue that binds the spirit’s concepts such as love, beauty, life’s purpose and death into a unity that brings meaning to personal experience.
As an unknowable something, spiritual health can neither be directly examined nor indirectly tested. But it can be assessed. Responses to the standard “how are you” social greeting like good, OK and not so hot, are self reports of spiritual health. Their accuracy, however, can be suspect.
Sometimes, without a word, body language telegraphs our states of spiritual health to others, especially to those who know us. At a glance it can be obvious whether the spirit, and indeed the whole person, is joyful or down in the dumps.
Like the schizophrenic mind and cancerous pancreas, an ill and broken spirit can cause tremendous suffering. At any age, loss can challenge an individual’s sense of personal, physical-mental-spiritual integration: How can I get through this? Who am I? What do I want to be/become?
At every age, successful spiritual recovery requires time, patience, resilience, and ultimately, personal transformation and reinvention. During aging, loss of loved ones and friends, diminution of health and physical strength or mental capacities, and necessary changes in living situations can be spiritually devastating. Medications prescribed for the elderly who are sad, discouraged or down in the dumps may complicate spiritual recovery.
There are unique spiritual challenges in getting older. In “Aging – it’s a family affair,” healthy aging expert Kay Van Norman (kayvannorman.com) explains that aging is not a solitary pursuit, but a multigenerational journey. The journey can be strongly influenced by family lore, stories from watching loved ones previously negotiating aging’s challenges.
The stories are condensed into internalized, unwritten scripts that tend to program everyone’s expectations. Programs can be changed, of course, but the when and how to do so may not be obvious or easy and may bring conflict within families.
Family members and friends often have different perspectives on the meaning of the aging person’s health or safety challenge and how to manage it. Oversimplified, one general view emphasizes caution, safety and security. Ms. Van Norman calls it “helicopter childering” when an offspring would overprotect a parent. The other encourages the challenged elder to take reasonable risks to learn new strategies for living fully beyond the challenge.
Ideally, everyone’s point of view would be presented and discussed with the challenged elder, who would consider the information in the context of her values and goals. Then she would make her choice and everyone would provide support.
Aging is a wonderful time for composing the next-to-last chapter of life’s story. It’s a time for making sense of experience by measuring mountains climbed, or not; making amends for transgressions, or not; and reconciling with the self and others, or not.
It’s a time for appreciating that little else matters other than being kind and graciously accepting kindness from others, and loving and being loved.
It’s a time to assist nature’s course by establishing a disciplined personal schedule of proper diet, moderate alcohol consumption, rest, exercise, socialization and intellectual stimulation.
It’s a time for centering on the mind’s natural ease by effectively dealing with troubling issues.
And it’s a time for nurturing the spirit by indulging the mind’s curiosity and continuing the search for natural joy and contentment.
Jim, your article in yesterdays news on aging, sounded like you believe in evolution. I know that can’t be the case, given your background in the study of the human body. We are especially created by intelligent design, and could not merely be the product of such a silly notion. Thoughts?
In the intelligent design vs evolution struggle, I come down squarely in the agnostic camp. Neither can be definitively disproven nor proven. Agnosis is a comfortable place for me. I can say what I want without wondering if it’s going to prove or disprove anything. I just muddle along trying to do my best.