It is never too late to find new tributaries that add vibrancy to our lives. Though the work of finding these sources may be difficult and slow at first, we should not abandon it. The rewards for persistence, as Rabbi Tarphon would remind us, are abundant. And they are abundant at any time of life. But as our sixties and seventies approach, we must increasingly take deliberate steps of our own if betterment is the objective, or even constancy. Less and less is there a choice whether to explore for the resources that enhance our years. Late in life, the exploration becomes mandatory.
The harvest of such explorations can be astonishing, and unpredictable to those of us who were convinced in our middle years that we had already found every avenue to which our interests might take us. Of the rewards of aging, few are more gratifying than the unexpected discoveries we make about ourselves. When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow returned to Bowdoin College for the fiftieth anniversary of his commencement, he brought with him a poem written for his 1825 classmates, “Morituri Salutamus,” whose final lines express as well as I have ever encountered the quiet confidence of those who never stop looking for the wellsprings that may appear late in life.
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
I have now, in the second half of my seventies, spent countless hours knowingly and unknowingly observing older men and women, and myself as well, under conditions ranging from extreme stress—as in life-threatening illness—to extreme tranquility—as in the reassuring warmth of home and family. As a result, I have become convinced that, beyond the pursuit of wisdom, there is a triad of factors that, among others of lesser but nevertheless significant consequence, are the essential ingredients of the benisons that should come with the later decades of our lives. Better that we discover them in youth, but there is no time beyond which they may not bring a flow of renewal to the journey. The three are: a sense of mutual caring and connectedness with others; the maintenance, insofar as we can influence it by our own actions, of the physical capability of our bodies; and creativity. Each of the three requires work; each of the three brings immense rewards.
Though the concept of creativity has not been directly addressed in these pages, it is interwoven into virtually everything that has been said. Think only of the creativity that has filled the days of some of the men and women encountered here, a creativity that has taken different forms for each of them. Sometimes the form of creativity has been on a continuum with all that came before, and sometimes creativity has made its entry in the form of something entirely new—whether a wellspring that appeared of its own, or one that required exploration, discovery, and digging to gain access to its vein of origin.
René La Forestrie is a man who has brought creativity into the drab existence of men and women in a place one might assume to be the unlikeliest of locations for such things: a public home for the aged. La Forestrie’s experience as a psychologist of vast experience with an elderly population has demonstrated that creativity is the key to the vibrancy that can rekindle the flame of older lives, and bring rewards previously unimagined.
When I met him in 1994, La Forestrie was director of psychology at Charles Foix hospital, a two-thousand-bed state-supported institution for the aged, located in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. As a result of his own long-standing observations, he was certain that some degree of creativity is inherent in everyone, and so he determined to establish an atmosphere at Charles Foix that might encourage it in the institutionalized old, a group traditionally so infantilized by society and caregivers that the probability of achieving such a goal would seem to be remote. His premise was not only that creativity is not lost among the elderly, but that men and women in this age group often have far more to say than does youth, and are capable of expressing themselves through the medium of graphic art, even if they had not previously had any experience with it. With this as a given, he introduced a program that, in fact, is an example of creativity.
The program’s aim was to find and set free that inherent creativity. La Forestrie’s intent was to let loose a wellspring that had been submerged during youth and middle age by the ordinariness or busyness of his patients’ lives, and more recently by their own and others’ negativistic attitudes about the aged. Because Charles Foix hospital is a public institution, the backgrounds of its occupants range from the uneducated to men and women with doctorates. It was La Forestrie’s contention that such people needed an outlet in order to say what they had to say, in spite of having had no previous idea that they wanted to say anything at all.
He began by inviting a group of Parisian painters—of whom there is no dearth in that most aesthetically attuned of cities—to work pro bono with any patient who wanted to avail him- or herself of the program. Enough ateliers, or studios, were converted from other uses so that all takers among the institution’s population might be accommodated. The response was gratifying, especially as so few of the responders had ever studied art before. Each of them was given a key to the atelier in which he or she painted, so that the room might be entered at any time of day or night. Working one-on-one with their aged acolytes, the professional artists found that they could bring out in them inclinations, emotions, and sometimes talents the elderly had never known existed. Most important, the urge to creativity was, in fact, recognized in virtually everyone, less to the astonishment of the instructors and La Forestrie himself than to the men and women discovering this new excitement within themselves.
At the time of my 1994 visit, the program had been going on for about fifteen years. Standing in one of the ateliers with La Forestrie one overcast wintry afternoon, I found myself gazing figuratively openmouthed at several dozen of the thousands of paintings housed in the institution’s collection. Nearby, a blue-kerchiefed woman of perhaps eighty was working quietly and with intense concentration on her latest oeuvre, so deeply immersed in the mixing of her colors that she seemed oblivious to our hushed conversation no more than ten feet from her. Though some of the pictures being shown to me were obviously the work of people who had discovered unsuspected talent, most were not. But each of those in the rather large group of canvases astonished me in its own way, with its expressiveness, its colors and forms, and its meaning to me as an observer. With few exceptions, there seemed evident such a depth of feeling and an artistry of emotion that I have not to this day forgotten the effect that the experience of seeing them had on me.
La Forestrie calls the years of being old l’âge de créer, “the age of creating.” But he might just as well put the expression backward, and say “the creativity of age.” In his program, as he states it so clearly, the perspective of the artist has enabled a liberation in the perspective of the elderly, has enabled an autonomy, has enabled an independence. These newly developed painters have done it, he points out, without self-regard or vanity. Their encounters with creativity have brought about not only a liberation of something powerful and new within them, but a transformation in their aging.
The wellsprings of creativity lie everywhere to be discovered. They may appear in the most improbable of forms and at the most unexpected of times. We should not wait for that appearance—we should actively seek it out, and then attend to the wellspring as if our lives depended on it—which they do, in fact. We must take up every promising opportunity with a sense of purpose, and throw ourselves wholeheartedly into it. For nothing less will bring the satisfaction that comes from allowing ourselves to become so totally immersed in a project that we lose all sense of anything but its importance to us at that moment.
“At that moment.” We live in moments, hours, and individual days. This is how things get done. Though the future must be planned for, and though all that we are at any instant is the result of all that we have been in the past, the actual living of our lives occurs in what William Osler a century ago called “day-tight compartments.�
�� Addressing an assemblage of Yale students in 1913, he quoted Carlyle, who wrote, “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” At any age, we must engage actively with the present. Be sure to climb a mountain from time to time, he urged, so that you may partake of the wisdom that comes of looking in all directions. Plan for future hopes, but to reach that time lying ahead, we must focus on the work of today: “Absorption in the duty of the hour is in itself the best guarantee of ultimate success.” A man may hold a single day in his hand, Osler advised, and in this way make it his own. “The future is to-day,” he proclaimed. “The day of a man’s salvation is now—the life of the present, of to-day, lived earnestly, intently, without a forward-looking thought, is the only insurance for the future. Let the limit of your horizon be a twenty-four hour circle.”
Osler understood that commitment brings focus, and only with focus and commitment can come the satisfaction that is the fruit of creativity. When we throw ourselves with intensity and purposefulness into achieving a goal, no matter its nature, the energy applied to the task is directly proportional to the energy generated in us by the creativity in which we justifiably take pride. Pride is a form of energy, and it is fueled by creating something. These things are made possible by the kind of determined concentration on the task at hand, which brings the joy of accomplishment. It is not so much the what of what we do, but the dignity, grace, and determination with which we do it. We need accomplishment at any age, but after the hurly-burly of getting and spending has ended and the latter decades approach, it becomes an essential in our sense of self. We do it best by living in day-tight compartments, and immersing ourselves in the now. When William Osler published his address as an essay, he gave it a title that declared it to be his personal philosophy: “A Way of Life.”
What we actually do occurs one day at a time. But its choice and its ultimate purpose is part of the panorama of our lives, which we can see only by ascending to that mountaintop often enough to maintain a focus on all that we have been, all that we are, and all that we wish to be. But too much time breathing the thin air on the peak induces vertigo and feelings of unreality, while depriving the climber of the oxygen necessary to get safely down to the plain below, where the real work is done. Still, the expansive view is necessary if we are to use the past and present to plan for the future, and make sure that all the day-tight compartments are well used, and all the synapses well lubricated with neurotransmitters.
What I am getting at with all of these high-altitude metaphors is simply that it is necessary to plan ahead, if old age is to be productive and rewarding. Every stage of life is preparation for the next, and even those beyond. And yet, we do so little to get ready for our own aging, other than to assure a financial nest egg and perhaps buy long-term-care insurance. In fact, some mistakenly believe that retirement is the time to abandon everything that has come before, as if that were possible. They escape to a sun belt of expectations that too often leaves them dissatisfied and seeking ways to relieve the ennui.
Old age must be based on a foundation built during the decades that precede it; it is not enough to do the best we can when the years have already overtaken us. Beginning in middle age, we must study how to be old, in somewhat the same way that we, when growing up, studied to be adults, and prepared for the coming responsibilities by educating our minds and strengthening our bodies. In its own way, aging is an art form—in itself a type of creativity.
The later years require wisdom even more than do the decades that have preceded them. Like the earlier ones, the later years must be approached with the conviction that they can be creative, and can contribute to the well-being of others. The wisdom—and the art, too—consists of understanding, preparing, and making the adjustments that will bring about such a portrait of age, and burnish it to an image of grace and goodness. The changes that gradually occur in our bodies must be perceived for what they are: messages that the wise have taught themselves to interpret in such a way that the best may yet be taken from every day, and every opportunity. Like all art, such a consummation demands vigilance, forethought, and application, and all of these can bring immense pleasure and the satisfaction that comes with the success of achievement.
The majority of readers of this book will live beyond their eightieth year, and some far beyond. If no preparations have been made for that probability—no serious thought given to it—now is the time to begin. I do not mean by this the practical preparations such as the financial or even the thorough health evaluation without which no man or woman should reach late middle age. What I mean is the cultivation of a worldview, an outlook with which to welcome rather than merely face the years and perhaps decades ahead—a way of life, to apply Osler’s words in a somewhat different context. If it is true, as Robert Butler, among the wisest of our seers of aging, puts it, that the baby boomers will be a “transformational generation…helping to transform old age,” then each boomer bears the responsibility to stand for periods of time on the top of the mountain, to look in every direction, and then to act—for his or her own sake and for the sake of those who come after them.
This book has not been about eating granola and emulating Okinawans, although there can be no doubt that these are good things to do; this book is about mind and spirit. We do, after all, put away money in a pension fund for our old age. Why not also prepare ourselves emotionally by putting away spiritual and intellectual capital? Why not prepare ourselves physically, by becoming accustomed to regular vigorous exercise and proper diet long before they become crucial to avoiding frailty? Why not prepare ourselves with a cultivation of the caritas that can bring untold rewards to every stage of our lives? Like a well-run pension fund, what we put in is proportional to what we get out, and the interest keeps growing.
And why not, earlier than we might have thought, begin to separate ourselves from the certainty that our career is our identity? Though we may define ourselves primarily by the occupation we have chosen for our life’s work, it cannot be allowed to be the only mirror in which we are reflected. Ideally, the balance has been there from the beginning, but hardly always. As the middle years slip imperceptibly into the later, our total humanity—always at the true basis of what we are—must be allowed to emerge as the guiding force of our lives, the total humanity that allows the full expression of caritas. These are things for which we prepare by letting them rise gradually to the surface, long before our careers in the marketplace have begun to dwindle, or have come to an abrupt halt.
It has been my observation that in the first forty or fifty years of our lives, we devote much thought and industry to being like others, emulating those we admire, and fitting into a mold that enables us to fill the desired and admired niche in the trajectory of a career and a social station. When not influenced by the vanity and false values so often surrounding us, much of this is to the good, because it is the pathway to understanding the ambience in which we live, and a pattern for worldly success. Not only that, but this is how we gather the knowledge and experience so crucial to the getting of wisdom. During all of this time, we are consciously and unconsciously discovering which parts of that accumulated observation fit best into our own system of values, and we are absorbing these parts into ourselves. So long as we are actively engaged in career, we must abide more or less strictly to the boundaries imposed by it. But once we begin to separate ourselves, we bit by bit become freer to continue maturing in ways distinctive to ourselves.
By such means, age becomes a liberator. All that we have absorbed in a lifetime of attention to others and the world around us becomes the wherewithal for the uniqueness that can now reach the zenith of its fulfillment. The better we have used our years, the greater will be the rewards of individuality and accrued wisdom. As Leonardo da Vinci wrote in the Codex Atlanticus, “If you are mindful that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so exert yourself in youth, that your old age will not lack sustenance.”
ACKNOWLE
DGMENTS
Always absent from a book’s Acknowledgments section is the unacknowledged convention that the name of spouse, lover, or best friend (or all three when they are embodied in the same person, as they are in this case) must always be saved for the very end, as though the climax of a crescendo built up by the preceding paragraphs.
I am married to a very impatient woman. Though not given to discouragement, wavering, or loss of will when matters are great, she chafes at delay when matters are small, as in restaurants, traffic jams, and the inanimate automation of telephone trees. Since it is in my power in this one instance to put her before everyone else, I will turn convention on its head by following the lead described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, by which “Many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” This last is the very least I owe to the most perceptive editor I have ever had, whether of my writing or my life. If my thesis in describing moral imagination is correct—and I am certain that it is—I am a far better man for the long habit of looking into her eyes and seeing myself reflected there. And if it is also true that wisdom grows with the strength of certain relationships of caritas—and I am certain that it does—I can lay claim for this single reason if for no other to being the wisest of men. This book owes any clarity it may have to Sarah Peterson’s uncompromising intelligence.
And it owes so much as well, to my editor, Robert Loomis. For years, I have nourished the hope that circumstances might one day be such that Bob and I would work on a book together, and it has finally happened. As rewarding as my fantasy had predicted our collaboration would be, the reality has exceeded even the high expectation. He has guided this book in ways obvious and subtle, and given me the honor I now claim, which is to call him my friend.
And as for friendships, Glen Hartley began ours with a phone call out of the blue, late on a Thursday afternoon some fifteen years ago. He and Lynn Chu have been the staunchest of advocates and the most determined of literary agents. To be represented by them is to be understood as a writer and to be appreciated as a man trying to articulate a vision of the human experience.
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