Aging: The Fulfillment of Life
by Henri J.M. Nouwen and Walter Gaffney. Photographs by Ron P. Van Den Bosch
Notable Books: Inspiring Readers for 30 Years
-
By Ruth Dempsey
(Originally
published at www.AgingHorizons.com, May/June 2009 issue. Reprinted here with kind permission.)
For 30 years, Aging: The Fulfillment of Life (Image Books) has drawn readers into a
gentle meditation on aging.
Three
decades after its publication, this book by Henri Nouwen and Walter Gaffney continues
to inspire and challenge us. "The elderly are our prophets, they remind us
that what we see so clearly in them is a process in which we all share. . . .
Their lives are full of warnings but also of hopes."
In
Part One, the authors show how ageism has transformed the old into second-class
citizens: unproductive, unattractive and incompetent. Not much has changed, it
seems. Older adults continue to be stereotyped as sick, frail and physically
dependent, according to a recent report from the International Longevity Center
U.S.A.
Aging:
darkness and light
When
older adults feel unwelcome in a society that touts profit, they lose their
feelings of self-worth. Thus, aging may lead to darkness. According to Nouwen
and Gaffney, much of the darkness is not the fault of individuals, but the
result of "structural cankers in our society," such as inadequate
housing, lack of education and poor health care.
But
aging can also lead to the light." Here, Nouwen offers the example of his
Dutch grandmother:
When
I think of her . . . I see her beautiful white hair and her small tender face,
which felt so soft every time she kissed me. Sitting in her easy chair, she
listened with great attention to all the stories I had to tell about my father
and mother, my brothers and sister, my studies and ordination, my plans and my
hopes. And I knew, for sure, she was always on my side.
And
Gaffney remembers the old woman who lived on the first floor of his tenement,
when he was a young boy. "Whenever I failed to stop in to see her after
school she would say: 'Walter, I missed you today.' How I loved to visit her
apartment. It was filled with cats, fish, birds, turtles and a dog named
Ginger."
According
to the authors, aging is nurtured by a sense of hope. "When hope grows we
slowly see that we are worth not only what we achieve but what we are."
In
Part Two of the book, the authors explore caring as a way to self and the
other.
Caring:
way to the self
Reaching
out to another human being means creating space for the person in our lives.
According to Nouwen and Gaffney, this kind of caring is characterized by
qualities of poverty and compassion. Poverty of heart allows us to experience
life, "not as a property to be defended but as a gift to be shared."
And compassion means the joys and challenges of growing old can be recognized
and shared: "Then those who care and those who are cared for no longer
have to relate to each other as the strong to the weak, but both can grow in
their capacity to be human."
Caring:
way to the other
Caring
for another person means being present in his or her life. According to the
authors, this type of caring has two main characteristics: acceptance and
confrontation. Acceptance is the ability to be present to another person
without judgment: I am here with you and I care. Confrontation is the refusal
to deal in illusions. As the authors argue, if it is true that people age the
way they live, then our first task is to help men and women to keep in contact
with their inner self, where they can experience their own solitude and silence
as potential recipients of the light.
Today,
aging is treated like a disease to be cured. But in this gentle meditation, the
authors reveal aging as our common destiny. And they help us rediscover its
soulful possibilities by reminding us: "Aging is the turning of the wheel,
the gradual fulfillment of the life cycle."
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