When we resist aging, we resist life itself, since aging is inherent in living.
A poem from Shel Silverstein nicely captures the invisibility that cloaks people as we get old:
Said the little boy, “Sometimes I drop my spoon.”
Said the old man, “I do that too.”
The little boy whispered, “I wet my pants.”
A few years ago, I came across an article by Bernard Starr in an online journal, Religion and Spirituality.
Dr. Starr titled the article “The Spiritual Emergency of Aging: Surviving ‘Thirty Something’ and Beyond.”
I wasn’t interested in the issues of the 30-something drama.
So spake the great geriatrician, psychiatrist and elder advocate, Robert N. Butler, who died in December 2010. According to his biographer, W. Andrew Achenbaum, he helped
“…to transform the study of aging from a marginal specialty into an intellectually vibrant field of inquiry.”
