What is the role of the wise elder in our contemporary society? There is a difference between growing old and growing up. Growing old is inevitable, and growing up is optional.
The youth culture idolizes immortality foolishly. As one grows up one comes to terms with limits, failure, and death. In growing up a person can come to face their demise with equanimity and the peace that comes from the satisfaction and fulfillment of completion.
Age discrimination is based on the denial of death in our culture. We don't want to think about it, understand it, respect it, let alone welcome it. We avoid it, deny it, and discriminate against anything that reminds us of it.
Age discrimination fundamentally is death discrimination which is crazy and mentally unhealthy. Wisdom comes from knowing that all things die. It is part of the life cycle. The concern should not be about death because death is natural. The concern is how to do it well and honor it and welcome it because of a life well lived. This wisdom is something that a youth idolizing society denigrates, dismisses, marginalizes and thereby creates unnecessary anxiety and social tension.
As elders who have come to terms with the downside of our life cycle and learned how to enjoy it and value it, we have much to offer to the younger members of our society. We, as elderly psychotherapists, have much to offer a society which is very much in need of our wisdom developed from thoughtful lives productively lived.
What are the three most important lessons you have learned so far inyour life that enlighten you and may be of help to others?
Many people have earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hard Knocks. The easiest place to find them is in AA. They are the twelve steppers.
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