“Getting Old or Getting Better?”

 “Getting Old or Getting Better?”      August 12, 2018       Dr. Roger Ray

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 Maya Angelou, “Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.”

 August 12^thalso fell on a Sunday in 1956 when I was born a little after noon. I had already been to church that morning, invitro, and have not missed many Sunday’s since. Sixty-two years ago, when I was born in Glasgow, KY, a guy born in this part of the world was expected to live for, well, about 62 years. Were it not for anti-biotics, I would have died from pneumonia at age 16, and even after surviving that, I likely would have had a lethal heart attack or stroke a few years ago were it not for the blood pressure pills that I now take daily.

Without the medical and nutritional advances of the past three generations, I would now be at the point of life where you would not bother buying a new suit and possibly not even green bananas. But people are living longer and if I can succeed in staying out of the crosshairs of my critics, I may reasonably expect to live another 20 years. . . a fact that not only disappoints the readers of my newspaper columns but it presents a challenge to balancing the books of social security and my church pension fund. 

The developed world obviously has benefited the most from these lifesaving sciences but, thankfully, people all over the world have enjoyed a longer life expectancy over the past half century. 

Life expectancy can be a funny thing. 

Man’s best friend may grow old and die in just ten or fifteen years. 

Whereas the seemingly worthless box turtle can expect to live for 50 years

While some breeds of parrots can live to be 100 years old.

Though you shouldn’t count on it in all cases.

For no good reason at all, come edible clams can live for more than 500 years.  

My daughter and her amazingly beautiful tribe of friends, whether they act like it or not, are turning 30 this year 

and they are quite irrationally upset about that fact. Time doesn’t not physically compliment us. I was a runner for many years and when I drive down the road and see someone running early in the morning, I still miss it, but I can’t do it anymore. When I am called upon to do physical labor, I realize that time has taken a great deal of strength and stamina from me. The mortality rate is 100% and yet we seem to never get tired of trying to deny it.

People my age will continue to insist that they are “middle aged” and I wonder just exactly how long that they think that they are going to live. We are not, after all, arctic clams. But we live in a culture that has come to fear aging and to worship youth. I am fond of something the president of Revlon said years ago, he said, “In the factory we manufacture cosmetics but, in the store, we sell hope.”

It is estimated that as much as $16 billion dollars is spent in the USA every year for various surgeries and treatments to fight aging and to look more attractive, much of which is aimed at women who now are paying for more than 300,000 breast augmentation surgeries per year, a quarter of million liposuction procedures, and some 20,000 butt lifts and enhancements. There are no power-point images for this portion of my talk today. 

But to put that into perspective, that’s two and a half times what it would cost to make public colleges and universities tuition free. When the final chapter of the book about the decline and fall of the American empire is written, surely there will be some piece on how we spent more on silicon than we spent on education. 

Ashton Applewhite wrote in his book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism: “The sooner growing older is stripped of reflexive dread, the better equipped we are to benefit from the countless ways in which it can enrich us.” 

The mortality rate is 100% and that unchanging fact simply should not frighten us or fill us with dread. I liked being young. I enjoyed being able to ride my three-speed stingray bicycle 50 miles to Mammoth Cave National Park just to buy a hot dog and a coke. I liked being about to stay out all night and still be able to go to work the next day. But there were things not to like about being young and there are things too like about every season of existence.

I am not going to bore you today with stories about cultures that venerated their elders rather than their 20-something super models. I have nothing against youth and I have no reason to be venerated. But I will tell you this: a few years ago I took nearly 30 years’ worth of sermons, articles, and papers that I had written and threw them in a dumpster because I would not want anyone to ever see them again. 

There were people in those years who thought I was a pretty good preacher, but I am embarrassed by what I did not know then, and even more embarrassed about what I was absolutely certain of that was completely wrong. There are advantages to every age and I even look forward to the next phase of my life.

Every Monday morning, I meet with our church cabinet for breakfast so that we can hash out church issues over eggs and bacon. Every Monday, we reach a point in our conversation when I announce, “I have to get to the office,” and everyone around the table giggles a bit and someone will offer, “I remember going to the office.” Mary McKenzie will get up from our breakfast table and drive her RV to Alaska to fish for a month or so. Dan Goodwin just decided to spend a couple of weeks exploring China, and Charles McKinsey recently drove up to Iowa where he endowed a cancer ward in a hospital. 

I have been a pastor for a long time. I have seen a lot of people retire, either because they had to or because they were sick and tired of going to work, but not everyone flourishes in retirement. Some people don’t even survive it for long. It may be more true for men than for women, but we are often identified by our career. What we do is what we are. We are not always good at social skills, but we have work connections and when we give up our employment, we are often giving up our identity, our social life, and our self-worth, all at once. 

I was a part of a community building experience a few years ago, designed by M. Scott Peck, in which a group of 30 strangers were to introduce themselves to one another, telling them who you are without telling them what kind of work you do, what your marital status is, or whether or not you have children. You would have been shocked to have seen yours truly standing around entirely speechless. Who am I if not a pastor, a preacher, a writer, and a father? Maybe not anything, and maybe that is a huge problem. 

Suicide is now one of the leading causes of death in the United States, more than 40,000 a year. That’s more than gun deaths or automobile accidents. The largest age group making up that alarming statistic is people over the age of 85. In some cases, I can understand. No one wants to live in chronic pain or to realize that they are rapidly losing touch with reality, but what alarms me is how many elderly people have come to think of themselves as being useless because they are no longer beautiful, or athletic, nor employed. Many have lost their social connections and even family connections. 

One of the most neglected geniuses of the 20^thcentury was the Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl. If you are watching this video at home and you have not read Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaningyou should turn this video off and start reading Man’s Search for Meaningright now. I will say in advance, “you’re welcome.”

Frankl liked to quote Fredrich Nietzsche who said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Frankl explained: I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. That is, whether you are old or young, you should have a conscious “why” to live but especially as you approach retirement, you need to have a plan that is more than watching T.V. and wondering when the kids will come to see you. 

Time does not necessarily make us wise. Time can leave you behind in the dust of ancient prejudice and myth while it doesn’t exactly flatter your appearance. If you find yourself being annoying to everyone around you to the point that it seems that there is no one around you, that may be on you. If you are going to be an angry old man, you need to at least be witty about it. Do not use guilt or pity to get young people to gather around your rocking chair, pull your rocking chair up to someone in your own peer group. If you find that you do not enjoy the company of older people, what makes you think that younger people are inclined to enjoy your company. 

I believe that it is vital to have a “why” to existence. Don’t retire just not to work anymore, retire to do something that is more meaningful than going to the office. 

Do not live in the past. Time moves in one direction only. So, stay current on the news. Do not despise new technology. Don’t let your smart phone be smarter than you are. There is a rich repository of history within you but give a thought to what lies ahead. If I gave everyone here a note card that said, “When I retire, I will . . .” then I hope that you would be able to complete the sentence.

When I retire, I want to study physics and astronomy. When I retire I want to spend the winter months scuba diving in the Caribbean. I miss the days when I could put my daughter in a car seat and take her down to the park to feed stale bread to the ducks, but did you know that there are children living all around us who have never been to the zoo and their parents have no plans to take them?

I wish that we could pass a law that mandated that nursing homes and day care centers would have to be built on the same campus so that children whose parents can’t spend time with them could spend their days in a universe of grandparents who could teach them how to read and do math in ways that made sense.

I can remember seeing my teacher burst out crying at the news that John Kennedy had been assassinated. I remember the riots that broke out when James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember rushing home from our church youth group to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. I was already a pastor when the Challenger blew up. I was a father when the Berlin Wall was broken down. 

We seniors are living history books and we have some stories to tell but beyond our wealth of memory, we can kindle a vision in a coming generation of a time without war, without hunger, without the crushing violence of poverty. If you still have breath, the world has need of you. Don’t wait for someone to come looking for you or to tell you what to do. Get engaged. Find what you have to offer and use it. Life is to be spent but not wasted.