An Elderly Muse

SUN., MAR. 4, 1990, 6:17 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yes, o son, this time of winter is fast disappearing, and your task of composing and getting out your first Ruminations of 1990 should be completed in this season. You shall do it, I’m sure, but you are letting it become pressureful. You have enough material, I’m sure, so let this be more of a motivational Teaching. You seem to need such just now.

An interesting Biblical question concerns whether Old Testament people truly lived hundreds of years, rather than three score and ten. Was life originally longer and then became shorter? Certainly there were disease organisms, but the Biblical story seems relatively disease-free. I could tell you the answers to such questions, but this is not to be a factual meditation. Just let it be a muse, as the title indicates.

Go ahead and presume that at one time people lived for centuries… up to 969 years. That was an “experiment.” The results were not as I wanted them to be. If life was to be that long there would have to be a relatively small population, and the elderly would have to work for most of that long life. It seemed better, then, to make the earth journey a shorter one, with a shorter working life and then a time of retirement and elderly status.

You have observed, and correctly, that elderly status has more honor and acclaim when the culture is not changing at a fast pace. When what an elderly person has experienced and concluded over a long lifetime is not considered relevant to the present, and therefore to the future, it is more difficult to value that elderly status. And it is not a pleasant way to finish out one’s days… being and feeling irrelevant.

Young people like to feel that this is a “brand new time,” not like those past (at least in your culture). They don’t like to hear that certain current issues have “been around” before… that certain problems are no more likely to be solved in this time than they were in the past. Thus, it can be difficult to be an elderly person with such perspectives. You must be able to live in the present with a “young attitude,” along with the perspectives from the past.

Let this muse hop, rather than logically progress, to another issue. To what extent should medical science, techniques, and technology maintain life when natural breakdowns occur? Heart attacks, stroke, and cancer are natural breakdowns in this modern time. Where the weakness is there is the breakdown. Some people survive with medical interventions (often radical ones) and continue with active, productive lives. Others survive but are not able to live life fully. A few truly just survive.

I think it should be clear that I don’t put excessive value on the length of an earth life. Actually I am rather neutral regarding medical interventions on elderly bodies, for I do see this panorama of results. I have no real objection to elderly people deciding to end painful and non-productive lives.

Remember My abiding theme: it is spirit that is important. When an elderly person has a well developed spirit, that continues to mature even under adversities of old age, then more life is certainly valuable and valued. But when the spirit cannot seem to benefit from adversities… when it is actually regressing in old age, then freeing that spirit from the body can be the best prescription.

You have had an almost painfree, problem-free life. Your physical body continues to work well, for its age. What shall be your “fate” as the years roll on. You muse about what you would do if you experienced a true heart attack or stroke. How much medical intervention would you seek… or allow? Would you let your body decide, or would you become a medical patient? You hope you can live life through without excessive medical treatment. Perhaps you can.