Eleanor Roosevelt said,
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
Welcome to The Soul Podcast. I’m Stacey Wheeler.
Today I want to pause to appreciate the human journey.
As I began the second half of my life, I realized that (for most of my life) I’ve had a youth bias. This was especially strong when I was a teen. I saw older people as less alive, less vibrant, and even projected that most of them were sad. I noticed the way old men walk; slow and sometimes a bit bent at the middle or at the shoulders. I judged them in subtle ways. Now I understand this mentality was driven by lack of life experience. But the bias wasn’t a naturally occurring one. My way of thinking was driven by countless little factors, including pop culture. It’s helpful to understand where our biases came from.
When I was growing up, older people in films and TV were usually portrayed in a very narrow way. These were caricatures, really. Those caricatures were not flattering. This imagery played a part in creating an unintentional bias in many people in my age group. Maybe the younger generations are the same. There’s still not much positive imagery about older people in the media.
And as far as I can tell this bias is common. Even if most of us aren’t aware we have it.
Today an older man passed by the window of the coffee shop where I was sitting. He was tall and thin, with weather-worn skin. He walked with a slow pace, moving his right leg in a way that told a story. He’s got a bad hip, or a lower back injury.
Every older person holds the story of an epic life journey. Some are more epic than others, yet none of them boring. If I could only press a button and see his whole life as a film. To see why he walks the way he does. To see his heartaches and losses. To feel his triumphs and moments of victory. The highs and the lows of the human journey.
When I was a boy, I loved to hold my grandmother’s hands. They were gnarled from arthritis. On one hand she was missing half a finger from an accident with a circular saw. She lost the finger building her home. Bessie was a Southern woman, but she was no wilting flower. She was born in 1902. She lived through the first world war and the second, Korea and Vietnam. She married. They lived in Oklahoma during the great dustbowl of the 30s. She was dragged by a horse when she was pregnant and lost the child. But went on to have 4 daughters. Her husband, Ruben left Oklahoma to find work. He hopped freight trains to get to California where he heard there was work to be had. He sent money back to support his family. They made it through the great depression and she and her four daughters moved to California to be with Ruben. He became a logger and a lumber mill worker. But at 50, Ruben died suddenly. A heart attack. Bessie never remarried.
She was feisty and she got a certain perverse delight from telling inappropriate jokes. She understood that these jokes were made funnier coming from an old woman.
My grandmother’s life began the year before the Wright Brother’s flight. In her mid-60s she watched the moon landing. She had two heart surgeries and once died on the operating table. And she kept on living. At the age of 92 she finally punched the clock and called it a life. When Bessie passed, she had 15 grand children and 28 great grandchildren. There wasn’t a single one who didn’t adore her.
My grandmother’s gnarled hands told the story of a life fully lived. They told the story of an epic journey. But she didn’t think about it that way. If you asked her, she’d say she was just making her way in the world. Living day to day. But what an epic journey! What a beautiful life. All the pain. All the beauty. Her life was a quilt work of human experience, stitched together as she moved from one moment through the next.
If someone had told her when she was a young girl what her life was going to be like, would she have believed it?
No. How could she possibly believe a story that epic.
Now pause a moment… and understand -we’re all on an epic journey. So is the man walking by the window of the coffee shop. That’s why he walks the way he does. That’s why his skin is weathered, and his pace is slow. He has lived!
We are all on our journey. And the journey requires pain. There is no journey without pain.
Consider Bessie’s journey. What if her story was ‘She was born. Everything went perfectly. She always had what she wanted and was never made uncomfortable by life’s circumstances. She had the exact number of children she wanted. And the children never made any problems for her. They were perfect. The births were painless, and she had all the money she ever wanted. When she passed, she died quietly in her sleep (at the same moment as her husband).’?
How boring!
None of us anticipate the journey we will have. But it is our journey. It is unique to each of us. There are no two journeys the same. And how beautiful that is! The pain is the exclamation points of our lives. And so are the joys. It’s a rough ride. By the time we arrive at old age, we’ve accumulated scars -some seen and some unseen. Those old injuries add up and they slow us down.
Julious Caeser said,
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
Aging involves many different flavors of pain. It takes someone ‘strong of mind’ and of strong spirit to do it with grace. And none of us want to volunteer for pain. And it doesn’t matter if we volunteer for it. Pain of all flavors is the journey. It’s how we learn. It’s how we grow.
Rumi said,
“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.”
It’s what we do with the journey that matters. Do we roll over and let the pain destroy us. Life’s experiences can hollow some people out, leaving them a shell of what they once were. Those same life experiences can be used to grow in mental and emotional strength, even as our bodies weaken with age. Our thinking determines how we approach the pains of life. We have a choice which begins with our mindset. Does our mind tell us we’re a victim, or does it tell us this is an epic journey? When we know it’s a journey we push forward. We endure the losses. We take the pain… and we continue the ride. In doing this we evolve to a greater level.
Remember what Elenore Roosevelt said…?
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
An old person is an epic story of a human life. The next time you see a hunched over old man or woman, pause and appreciate that life. Honor that journey. Can you find the beauty there?
And then remember, you too are becoming a ‘beautiful old work of art.’