Wise Words on Fear of Aging

[EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the several good things that have come from my blogging at blogher.org twice a week is meeting a remarkable woman named Marian Van Eyk McCain. Her interests range wide and include, among others, what you would expect for a woman whose way of living falls under the “crunchy granola” rubric.

Marian lives as I would if I had more spine about what I say I believe in. Among the issues that raise her ire and indignation are destruction of rainforests, dangerously insane presidents, agribusiness, GM food, animal experimentation, fundamentalism, conspicuous consumption and – ageism.

Marian and I have similar concerns, but on that last item, we are pretty much two peas in an organic pod although we speak or, rather, write in different voices. So today, here is an article Marian wrote four years ago (before I was blogging here) titled Looking Where We Are Going: Releasing the Fear of Getting Old, first published in the quarterly magazine, Alternatives.

Marian also maintains The Elderwoman Website which is described as “a meeting place for women of age, maturity and wisdom” where you can subscribe, if you wish, to her free, monthly Elderwoman Newsletter. Here then, some wise words from Marian Van Eyk McCain on fear of aging:

It was one of those television shows that half the nation watches. But since my partner and I are fortunate enough not to share our home with a TV set, until last October I had never seen that show before.

On that October morning, I happened to be staying with friends, in a house where breakfast conversation was as long gone as the moa and the mammoth. So to be polite, when I walked into the room and found everyone dully watching the screen, I took my place on the sofa, alongside all the other millions.

The woman being interviewed was around fifty. The superb, high cheek-bones that had been her passport to success, were still apparent, and anyone more media literate than I would have known who she was. But oh dear, the skin that covered those bones was sagging now, and that is why she was here—a brave lady, said the producer - telling us about it. It was sagging in all the usual places where our skin loosens as we age and lose our youthful fleshiness —the cheeks, the forehead, around the eyes. (Mine has been like that for years. But then, I am nearly sixty-seven).

“I look so tired, now” she said, staring at her own reflection in the plastic surgeon’s mirror.

She did, too. But it was not the tiredness of a day’s hard labor in the fields or the delicious weariness of a long-distance walker. It was a thin, petulant tiredness, an empty tiredness that dulled her famous face, almost into nothingness.

You might walk past that face which had graced so many magazine covers and not even notice it. Not because her cheekbones were any lower, but because her eyes were empty. There was no soul showing. There possibly never had been, I suspected. But under the mask of make-up and the practiced, commercial smile, that had never mattered before. It was clear that what she wanted was to have her young face returned to her—or rather, a reconstructed version of it.

The camera panned a pastiche of magazines. There was her life. She wanted it back. And—for who knows how many thousand dollars—the kindly surgeon promised he would restore it to her. Was that not kind and noble of him to give this poor woman back her beauty? To glue the faded petals carefully on to the rose again?

In gruesome detail, he showed us what he would do. A simple little nick here, a tuck there, all neatly hidden behind the hairline.

That was when I got up and went in to the kitchen, to make myself some breakfast and have a conversation with the cat. At some later point, glancing back into the darkened living-room, I saw a brief shot of that woman’s sliced up face, swollen beyond recognition, undergoing its longed-for rearrangement. I felt too sickened to go back in and watch the rest.

I suppose I should have done. I could have gone in there with one of those little bags you find in the backs of airline seats, and sat the program out. I often tell myself that I really should make more effort to comprehend and understand the full awfulness of mainstream culture. But to be honest, I do not have the stomach for it.

While I was watching her talk to the surgeon and bemoan her “tired” face, all I wanted to do was to burst into that TV studio, take that woman by the shoulders and shake her awake.

After I had shaken her, what then? Oh yes, I fantasized that, too. I would put her in a taxi, take her to the airport, and drag her on to a plane for Africa or rural India or Bangladesh. And I would make her work. Not draping around in front of a camera, or mincing down catwalks, but proper work. Together, she and I would help the village women plough their ground. We would plant vegetables and weave baskets and fetch water. We would hug trees in defiance of the chainsaws, stop the dams, milk the goat, pick wild herbs, tend a sick child and a dying person. We would sing, play drums and dance in the firelight. We would talk together about the meaning of life and death, and watch the stars against a velvet black sky.

Some year, when she came home—if she ever did come home—she would look at her face again in the mirror and enjoy the face that smiled back at her. She would touch her fingertips to her weathered, withered cheeks and marvel at the grandeur of a wise, old face like that. And if you dared to suggest to her that she might want to slice it up and rearrange it, she would throw her head back and laugh a full-throated laugh and say you must be nuts. “But,” she might add, eyeing you shrewdly, “If you are offering, I’ll take the money instead, please. I know a village that needs cash for a new well .....”

Yes, it would have felt good to do all that. But all I did was to sit and finish my breakfast and complain to the cat about our society’s idiotic attitudes to aging.

How did we miss that sage piece of advice given by Carl Jung about what he called “the afternoon of life?” For as he pointed out, that afternoon has its own agenda. It should not be lived, he warned, according to the program of life’s morning. Which is what this poor woman with the empty eyes was trying to do.

It is a project that is doomed to fail. Botox injections, cosmetic surgery and HRT cannot keep us young. They only keep us looking backwards, longingly, at a youth we can never have again.

Imagine if we drove our cars like that—looking only out of the back window instead of at where we were going. We would soon crash. Which of course is exactly what so many people do. They crash into illness, obesity, depression; into meaninglessness, into emptiness. Or into an endless round of golf, voyeuristic travel to pretty places behind the safe portholes of a cruise ship, shopping for the sake of shopping, or worrying about investments and reading magazines about how to cope with incontinence, Alzheimer’s, and not being able to get in and out of the bath.

But there’s a new wave gathering. Just when it will run up on the shores of mainstream awareness, I cannot say, but I feel it getting bigger and stronger, all over the so-called Western world. It is nothing less than the full revival of powerful elderhood.

In little pockets of awareness here and there, the Baby Boom is, despite all its kicking and screaming, starting to wake up to the possibility that getting old might, after all, be a grand adventure rather than a disaster from which to hide one’s eyes.

In aging, as in everything else, the Cultural Creatives, as we call them, are the ones quietly crafting a whole new approach.

Ram Dass, that mushroom-tripping guru of the sixties, who has remained an icon ever since, with his self-deprecating wit, wide smile and ever-growing wisdom, started running “conscious aging” workshops, a few years ago, when he was 62. Then he began to write a book about this new approach. His book was almost finished when a massive stroke nearly killed him. Now, confined to a wheelchair & somewhat aphasic, but irrepressible as ever, he writes “I’m the advance scout for the experience of aging, and I’ve come back from the scouting party to bring good news.”

As he and others have attested, old age is not a disaster at all. On the contrary, if you really embrace it, the so-called “third age” can turn out to be an even more wonderful and interesting adventure than the other two ages—childhood and maturity—put together.

Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, who was probably the first to offer workshops for conscious aging, has a name for this process of reframing our stereotyped image of what it means to get old. He refers to it as the move “ from aging to sage-ing”.

One of the hardest challenges for women—and the one that woman on the TV show could not rise to meet—is to accept the loss of youthful, sexy looks and the onset of gray hair, wrinkles, sagging skin and breasts. Trying to hold back this change reminds Ram Dass of “someone rushing around the fields in the autumn painting the marvelous gold and red leaves with green paint. It’s a lot of wasted time and energy.”

There are so many other things, he might have added, which could well have been done with all that time and energy.

In ages past, women—especially older women—were the healers and comforters, the midwives, the attendants at the doors of birth and death, and the trustees of wisdom. They had a special relationship with Nature and all the Earth’s creatures.

Persecuted, over several centuries, their numbers decimated and their power wrested from them, women have carried, in their collective psyche, a fear of reclaiming those important roles. But the time has come, now, for them to reach out and own them again. Only by so doing, I believe, can some of the current imbalances in the yin/yang of our planet be corrected.

To the fifty year old woman, faced with her increasing invisi-bility in the popular culture and her falling stocks in the sexual market place, being advised to accept the process might seem at first like the cruelest irony. That which made her feel the most womanly—her juiciness, her fullness, her raw energy, her sexual attractiveness—is what she is being asked to relinquish.

Yet these are the very things she has to be able to give up gra-ciously to be complete as a woman. It is the woman who no longer tries to be what she once was, but fully embraces what she now is, who is, truly, the most womanly of all. The elderwoman, or “crone” is more completely a woman than any other female person, for she is the one who has lived each stage of the cycle.

Only by living the whole cycle, from birth, through childhood, maturity and old age, can we experience the full range of what it is to be human.

To do so is, in fact a privilege, for not everyone is able to stay here that long. (If you asked any terminally ill person of forty or fifty whether they would swap their present predicament for a healthy old age, complete with wrinkles, how many would say no?) Our ancestors, just like those dying people, had to condense their whole life experience into a much shorter time span than many of us will have to. Archaeological studies show that Neanderthal people rarely lived beyond their thirties. Even in the 1800s, to be fifty was to be an old man or woman. So we are, if you think about it, incredibly lucky.

Yet how many of us move forward into these “bonus” decades with a full-bodied, open-hearted, enthusiastic acceptance of the aging process? How many of the Baby Boom generation see themselves as apprentices for real, wise elderhood; the sort of elderhood and wisdom our planet desperately needs and is so patently short of right now?

How many are there, waiting in the shadows, wondering if others are thinking the same way?

They are there, right enough. I think we shall be surprised how many.

So please come out and be counted. And don’t worry if your face looks “tired.” You’ll be tired all over by the time you are through. But it will feel good, I promise…

Comments

[Steve Sherlock]

Thanks for sharing this Ronni.

I wrote about a great quote I took from this on one of my blogs: http://tertiary-education.blogspot.com/2007/02/most-womanly-of-all.html

[Rain]

Wow what a totally great article, thank you for sharing it. To what she said, I can only add Amen!

[Bonnie]

That is such an accurate expression of what our attitudes should be. This morning on one of the morning shows, Meridith interviewed several models over 50 and under 65 who were participating in an ad campaign extolling the beauty of "mature" women. They were indeed all beautiful, but again were chosen for their good bone structure, perfectly groomed hair, flawless skin even if there were wrinkles, and perfect teeth. There is still a standard of beauty we can hardly hope to attain when we have surgery scars, age spots, thinning hair, and arthritic hands or feet that remind us of our mothers.

It is the ability to live for others, not the ability to age beautifully that is the true secret of aging gracefully.

[notdotdot]

What a great article. Thank you for bringing it to us. Even in our better momments of getting with the program of aging gracefully, it's always a bit of a shock to see every now and then how affected by our culture we really are. Sigh. Up hill work to accept it all. And we often have to do it alone.

[Rhea]

Fabulous piece. Thank you for posting it. A number of years ago, when I was part of a lot of feminist circles I always heard talk of the 'crone' and the wisdom of older women. We read books and essays about it. We felt proud and unafraid of growing older. Now, feminism is a dirty word and my feminist friends have scattered far and wide. I think it is hard to face up to the flood of images in the media that denigrate older people without a countering attitude like the one I was exposed to among in those feminist circles. We need a movement!

[Cowtown Pattie]

Marian,

A terrific piece of writing - I enjoyed my morning coffee with a smile, and nodding agreement.

Thank you, Ronni, for introducing us to another wonderful elder blogger.

[Claude]

This is so interesting and enlightening. I'm running to the elderwoman website!

[Mage]

Oh yes, but what I see is that momentary pang when an old lover stops by. There too is those few seconds when you know you are twelve years older than your husband. Other friends find their jobs slipping away with their chins, and acceptance back once everything is tightened.

Oh yes, it is all in the eye of the viewer....but then again, who are the viewers.

[Marion Dent]

Is it “witchy” or is it sexism?
I am a 71 year old feminist….with “superb, high cheek-bones” and “good bone structure”. About Releasing the Fear of Getting Old” Marian and I also have very similar concerns, and agree on many things she says, and I really appreciate Ronnie calling her work to our attention. However, on her discussion of how each of us goes about “getting old”, she singles out “beautiful women” as the primary examples of “how not to do it”…..and I take exception to that. I don’t think it is necessary to denigrating “beautiful women”/”ugly women” to make a point, about aging women. ……And I find the remark:”…… but because her eyes were empty. There was no soul showing. There possibly never had been, I suspected.” very “witchy”. ( Which rhymes with “Bitchy”.)

Marian says:“The woman being interviewed was around fifty. The superb, high cheek-bones that had been her passport to success, were still apparent,”
Bonnie in the Comment section chimes in: “Meridith interviewed several models over 50 and under 65 who were participating in an ad campaign extolling the beauty of "mature" women. They were indeed all beautiful, but again were chosen for their good bone structure, perfectly groomed hair, flawless skin even if there were wrinkles, and perfect teeth.”

Blame the society’s idiotic attitudes to aging……. but don’t take it out on “beautiful” women who found their personal power the only way our idiotic society allowed them. And I wouldn’t look to Karl Jung to advise women on how to live out “the afternoon of life”. As should be pointed out, he turned his back on his “old” wife and spent the “afternoon” of his life with his young assistant!
And it seems to me, there might be something to be said for Botox injections, cosmetic surgery and HRT. Every woman’s situation is different….we have to do what we have to do to survive: whatever it takes.
(Babyboom’s don’t know what it was like.) We mustn’t turn our backs on modern medicine and technology: Boniva, cholesterol lower drugs, radical cancer treatments (the computer!). It is not a about “looking back”……it’s about standing tall and proud and using every possible option made available to us for the journey ahead.
Enough of “divide and conquer. We are all “beautiful” women The height of our cheekbones do not define us. Perhaps the Baby Boom generation
~~can~~ “ in their usual arrogance, see themselves as apprentices for real, wise elderhood”……but it will only be possible because a bunch of us “beautiful” ‘ol broads fearlessly lead the way of re-defining what it means to be a woman in this society……and take my word for it, we are fearlessly facing getting old, high cheekbones, wrinkles, sagging skin and breasts and all, with the same courage that gotten us this far.

[Marion Dent]

Bye-the-Way:You can see those "high cheekbones" on my new blog. I hope you will join me, a child of the 50's and a feminist trail blazer of the 70 in attempting to remind the younger women of today of the history of current feminism and the courageous women, who have gone before, and why their battles were so important for aging women today. Perhaps we CAN ignite an "A Beautiful 'Ol Broads" movement Rhea!

[Cop Car]

What a great writing! Thanks Ronni. I did, however, much as Marion Dent must have experienced, feel that the physically beautiful women were being unfairly impuned. Of all the physically beautiful women I have know, few (if any) would fail to be counted beautiful for their non-physical persons.

I, personally, never went out of my way to look anything other than neat, clean, presentable--not because I had anything against physical beauty, but because my personal interests lay in other spheres--in science. However, although I didn't try to emulate other life styles, I did not and do not berate others who lived them. Their reality is just as valid as mine--or anyone else's.

The other thought that came to mind in the reading was that, historically, crones were probably in the 30-40-year-old range. (I believe someone else made similar notation.) Many of us are so fortunate to have so many more years to try to develop our own brands of wisdom. Peace.

[joared]

Marian's comments at Blogher.org on some of your posts caught my attention, so have previously visited her blog. Interesting to read her here.

I think she has described so well a perspective and many points on aging with which I concur. I, too, hope more of the boomers, like the ones I know, come out of the shadows to demonstrate the beauty of aging naturally.

I would also have to agree that none of us are well-served when generalizations are made about any group, be they the high cheekboned or those blessed/cursed to be of the physical beauty type admired in our society.

As for Jung, he wouldn't be the first to have valuable insights and views to pass along, but didn't incorporate what he knew into his own life. Like anybody I read, I take from them what is meaningful for me.

[Darlene]

When I read Ms. McCain's article I agreed with her 100% but after reading the comments I had to mull it over and come to a modified conclusion. I believe the whole issue boils down to motivation. If the famous woman with high cheekbones (which I have secretly always envied) needed to recapture her beauty to continue to make a living then she was entitled to do so because that asset was her means of survival. If it was pure vanity, then I agree that she has failed to keep up emotionally with her maturing face. Whatever her motivation was though, I agree that she should not have allowed herself to be exploited on TV with the graphic details of her surgery. We can't all be Mother Teresa's. However, "To thine own self be true, then thee cannot be false to anyone" (I hope I have used the correct quote -- was it Browning? If not, I confess to an aging mind that sometimes fails me)

[Paul]

I don't fear getting older, because we all are getting older. I resist dwelling on it !

[joared]

I re-visited The Elderwoman Website, spending a little more time there than previously and found it to be much richer than I recalled, especially when I read the excerpt from her last book.

[jasmine]

It is all about acceptance and compassion whether we view one as beautiful or not. Who are we at any age to judge anyones motives or choices. How about we just be comfortable in our own skin and quit judging. Now that is real wise womanhood!

[anna]

My mother had high cheekbones and died at the age of 79 without a line or wrinkle on her face. I think women tend to look younger longer with cheeks placed high on the face. A defined jawline also helps. Not everyone ages the same way - the sagging skin usually has been damaged by the sun. The sun damages the elastin in the collagen. This gives the skin a droopy appearance due to elasticity loss(elastosis). And it's this droopiness that makes one look older not so much the lines or wrinkles. Fat loss in the face also contributes to the aging process. Genetics have a lot to do with the way one ages. I have high cheekbones and always looked young so I know genes have a lot to do with it. Just take care of your skin, stay out of the sun and don't introduce any heat under your skin. Lasers will do the same thing that the sun does but at a more rapid pace. Stay away from any type of laser devices. I would not want to be 20 again. Older women are just as attractive as the younger women. Eat healthy, exercise, and be joyful.