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INTENTION : |
That the Church and society may respect the wisdom and experience of older people.
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The wisdom and experience of older people is not something that can be taken for granted , but, rather, an extensive process and a journey to be travelled. To begin with, one must distance oneself from the negative view of old age taken by the dominant cultural models: a time of regression, loss and inactivity, lacking in expectation and projects and irremediably full of bitterness and nostalgia; or the 'recreational revenge' version, which pushes one into empty leisure and becoming stupefied in consumerism and superficiality.
Reaching this wisdom and experience requires certain conditions: when old age approaches, one must decide to take charge of one's own existence, live with the decision and begin to negotiate the changes which the step of ageing is going to bring into life. Like it or not, it concerns a different stage from those before, in which, along with obvious losses, new opportunities present themselves. But for this, one has to take it on board, little by little, and accept peacefully the idea that the time will come to give up some of the tasks or responsibilities that one had in hand, to take up others more suited to the moment in which one is. One has to face a certain 'dispossession' and begin to look sympathetically at the new possibilities that present themselves; an accelerated rhythm of life is coming to an end, it is possible to begin another way of being present to others, through welcome, listening and companionship without hurry. It is not about losing interest in what one invested dedication and energy in before, but about finding other ways of acting and being present.
Wisdom at this stage has much gratuity, interiority and relaxation, and a new way of living beyond efficiency, exteriority and activism. We recognize it in those men and women who are not obsessed with looking frantically for how to be busy, but, little by little, making themselves more available for what God is planning for them. It appears in the serenity of those who have let go of what they had in them of 'personage', with its burden of 'image', roles and functions and allowed themselves to pass, stripped of all that, into their true identity, free and authentic.
In the midst of a world where possessing, guarding, accumulating and keeping seem to be the aim of life it is stimulating and liberating to meet older people who are making themselves experts in letting go.
And they make this experience an alternative and surprising way, just when the experiences of loss begin to become more frequent and inevitable and the psychic and bodily organism develops claws and tentacles to avoid being stripped.
We recognize this wisdom also in the option for love of life which fills the hearts of many old people with thanksgiving, and gives them a talent for blessing and joy, quite the contrary of those 'death-loving' habits which bring back the past in the form of resentment, grumbling and complaints.
It will never be an easy or cheap wisdom. The price of achieving it is choosing to practise a certain 'theological daring', the decision to take faith, hope and love to their ultimate conclusions, believing in the evangelical promise of life in abundance and, therefore also of 'old age in abundance'. It cannot be reached by force of effort, but is a task undertaken with 'determined determination', knowing full well that what is achieved will be received as a free gift. Still less will it be an attitude in which one suddenly finds oneself, but a Christian way of making the transition from one living landscape to another, and of travelling this road with wisdom and patience, slowly, as is fitting for older people.
And if this time brings with it effects that are costly and difficult to accept, its entire horizon does not come to an end there. As Joan Chittister says: 'One of the marvellous facts of life is that every ending brings with it the potential for a new beginning.'
Before us is the task, certainly highly countercultural, of revealing this 'potential for a new beginning' which makes possible an old age with splendour, in the presence of God who can make us cry out with joy at the gates of evening.
S. Dolores Aleixandre RSCJ
Religious of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
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