Life Transitions: A senior quest for meaning

Our quest for meaning, as seniors, should lead us, not over the hill, but to the valley of awareness as we each find our personal path.

But because we have found an age-old path to explore does not mean we are no longer interested in, or capable of, making our own personal path serve humanity, as well.

We have become both the “familiar” and the” new.”

We are the ancestors and we often forget our charge to society because our attention is directed to new challenges. However, at our age, we are no longer nourished by conquest or hoarding the past.

A new framework for our life can become our creative process and can be a worthy goal for our golden years. Now, our traditional position in the world as elders is often seen as a lesser position to our children.

But WE are capable of speaking two languages now. Just as children struggle for attention and legitimacy, as elders, we are doing the same thing.

We are exploring a new path. One that is no longer appropriate as movers and shakers on the highway of life.

And so there is the necessity to learn a new “language”!!

Finding fresh ways to express ourselves can reinvigorate us instead of becoming a daunting task. These days, because becoming an adult is such a coveted achievement due to the current generation’s need for power and status, children and elders are forced into subjection to the rules and attitudes of “those in charge.

They, as the ADULTS have no concept any more of who they are from birth to death, because the child and the elder roles have lost stature in this world of adult achievement as a primary goal.

And where achieving of the power of success and becoming competent in the vast new world of instant everything has become the ruling criteria of success!

Children are “invisibles” hurrying to become potent adults and in that process are negating OLD AGE, as well.

No one says, “I can hardly wait to become a senior member of this society.”

The modern adult assumes the responsibility for how society functions while the child is kept busy being taught “their” ways, and the elders are politely, or rudely, pushed aside so that now the adult Ego has full reign in our society.

What happened to the wise Elders who were sought for their experience, their perspective and their wisdom?

Now it has become the rule that the children and the elders have to petition for space and recognition.

This is a huge mistake and will ultimately not be successful in the larger scheme of society as a whole.

Children are given to others to rear and elders are given away to “homes” or “communities” where they too often wither and die.

They go away without ever being mined for their talents, their experience and their particular perspective, having spent whatever number of years of acquiring what time offers to all of us: WISDOM!!.

We elders, except in cases where we have the monetary and professional power, are relegated to “homes” with our elite children or to “homes” of a different sort. If we are lucky, we find communities where we can play, but eventually wither and die without anyone being made aware of the reason for our often premature demise.

The prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer’s is brought on, in part, by the demotion before our time of our minds, which are rich with experience and wisdom, our having already learned by trial and error in a world less modern and more used to respecting all ages and their particular gifts.

Plus, life was harder for us and we truly had to earn our stripes instead of having them bought by our parents.

No longer striving to discover and conquer new territory, we seniors are about the gentle appreciation of the world we built and to finding the beauty and meaning of the terrain around us, the flora and fauna, the stars in the heavens and the Earth, itself.

We no longer need to name and claim. We are explorers of the richness of our experience on this planet.

We find the beauty and we want to offer our vision of how humanity can prosper and wisely manipulate our world, not to rule over it, but to find the hidden meanings in it!

What we are about is frightening to our children because we no longer share their values and their goals.

The world they have created and understand levies power, not respect for the achievement of becoming humane and, therefore, the teachers of the young.

Their young are farmed out to “experts” and their elders are “safely” stashed away in a place more appropriate, according to modern P.O.V.

Unfortunately, there is no mirror which reflects back to them the greed, the egocentricity and the unchecked squandering of the world’s riches which include their forebears and their offspring.

Again, unfortunately, there is little feedback, no mirror to look into to see how out of balance they are becoming with nature.

Nature must be included, and not only flora and fauna, but the innocent youth and the still potent mature adults in order for the world to stay in balance.

What we elders need to become attentive to is our own blindness and begin to take our natural role of shepherding the world and teaching necessary planetary laws, not just of survival, but of how humanity in all its many facets can work together to grow more cognizant of our need to create lasting formulae to repair and maintain our precious planet.

Our task now is to speak to our grandchildren and warn them not to tread the same path blazed by their parents. We must remind them of the balance that a healthy planet requires in order to truly prosper.

And the need for them to become desirous of making a contribution to the world’s needs, to come into harmony with nature’s wisdom and most of all, the respect for the process of growth which includes youth and elders as well as adults working in balance with each other to provide enough perspectives so that education can become wisdom and the world can prosper properly, not just survive by the skin of its teeth.

There WILL be an uprising. We don’t know when but we know that it is ordained by the very negligence that fosters rebellion and righting the imbalance.

For balance is a real and continuous requirement in order to keep the planet on course in its journey around the sun. Balance will be attained and lost again and again.

It is the tug of war between progress and posterity. Both are enriching and both can live side by side.

There is no innate animosity between the concepts, just between those whose immaturity demands a world view belonging to the victors.

What happens to the elders and the children - those who are growing up and those moving on?

This ancient and primal continuity is perceived only by stepping back and gaining a broader and truer perspective.

We elders must remind our children that their world depends on their understanding the critical balance our planet is in and what that means to the future of humankind.

They must be reminded that each and every choice we make, each step we take, we take as an ancient species, not a newly invented modern culture.

When we lose our ancestral identity, we also lose the compass with which to proceed safely into the future.

Happy Fourth of July to all!

Aurora Hayes is Green Valley resident, originally from California.

Her graduate degree is in adult counseling. She is also a certified clinical hypnotherapist who has worked over 40 years in the field of emotional health education and support. Her private practice in California included counseling for families, couples and individuals. She and her husband moved to Green Valley in 2004. Contact her at aurorahayes@cox.