Ageing Gracefully
The tragedy is not ageing, but its delusion: the refusal to accept limitations and the loss of all that we once held to be true and treasured about ourselves.
William Butler Yeats, Nobel prize winning Irish poet, wrote poems of a gentle, exquisite beauty; but he was also capable of a brutal self-honesty, evident in the poems he wrote in the last year of his life.
In “The Circus Animal’s Desertion”, the poet mocks his entire career as a writer. “My circus animals were all on show”, he writes, bitterly describing how he tried and failed to live up to his own high expectations and visions. By the end, he’s lying in a garbage pit filled with broken, hideous things: “Now that my ladder’s gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart”.
Watching the agonising and sorrowful decline of President Biden, I’ve often thought of this poem. It is a poem about a great and talented man acutely conscious of how age has sapped his energy; alienated those closest to him; and eroded his own sense of self.
The opening lines capture the magic and vigour of his personality – his proud creations, the circus animals, his admirers, the acrobatic boys, his success symbolised by the golden chariot – and they also spell out the despair and affront of old age, of at last “being but a broken man”.
“Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.”
The desertion of one’s admirers, and the depletion of one’s reserves, are of the most acute challenges to a lifetime. The great conundrum of ageing is, of course, that we all want to live to a ripe old age, but we don’t want to become aged and decrepit in the process. Judaism has long recognised this in its championing for a long life, but also being mindful of King David‘s poignant plea to the Almighty: “Do not cast me off in the time of my old age; when my strength fails, forsake me not“ (Psalms 71:9).
It has also recognised that the most critical question is not how long we live, but how well we live. Moses was 80 when he assumed leadership of the children of Israel at the burning bush, and he lived until the proverbial age of 120; but then he was fortunate in that until the very end “His eyes were undimmed and his vigour unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7).
His unfailing good health combined with his unimaginable strength of mind allowed Moses to be what George Valliant calls a model of generativity – a protector of and giver to the next generation – and a keeper and transmitter of meaning.
This is the blessing of the wisdom of old age, or of what Judaism calls being the prudent and thoughtful elder, the zaken. It is first identified in Abraham, whose old age is called a ripening of his richest blessings. He comes to his death with a lapful of benedictions.
The problem, of course, is that old age is hampered by a failing of strength and a diminishing state of mind.
Judaism never shied away from this, and it is most sadly evident in the final chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes and its searingly honest description of senescence:
“So remember your Creator in the days of your youth: before the days of misery come, and years draw near when you will say: “I have no pleasure in them” —before the sun and light and moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds dissipate after the rain… or the golden bowl is crushed, or the jug at the cistern is shattered, or the wheel at the well is broken. Then the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.“
It is at this moment of cruel inevitability that clarity, self-honesty and brutal self-awareness are most needed. Perhaps this is what the Psalmist really meant by “do not allow me to be cast into old age”. The tragedy is not ageing, but its delusion: the refusal to accept my own limitations and the loss of all that I once held to be true and treasured about myself.
Humility requires us to recognise and accept when we have a failing body and weakening mind. It means knowing when it is time to let go, and to listen to the voice within and the voices of your most honest friends and critics. It’s going when people still want you to stay, as opposed to staying when they want you to go. Better is the path of humility than the disgrace of humiliation.
What made Biden’s last days before resigning so painful to watch was that this essentially good and humble man was inviting his own humiliation.
As writer Arthur C Brooks has observed, “the biggest mistake professionally successful people make is attempting to sustain peak accomplishment indefinitely”. Instead of denying ageing and trying desperately to keep things the way they are, one needs to learn how to embrace the changes and the new challenges and opportunities they offer. To reinvent oneself rather than regress into one’s old self. You have to labour to age gracefully and beautifully! Brooks suggests that it’s about stopping seeing life as a canvas to fill and starting to see it as a lovely block of marble to shape according to your needs.
Our ancient masters and sages advised that the last stage of life is about synthesising and integrating all you have learnt and gained from life and sharing it with those around you – even as you courageously prepare for your own death.
This is the Mosaic model and can save one from the desolation of ageing; it is what psychologist Eric Fromm refers to as achieving “Ego Integrity” as opposed to sinking into despair. This is how you salvage the breaking heart and discover that point of purity where all ladders start.
Shabbat Shalom and a peaceful weekend
Rabbi Ralph