Living and Aging with Dignity

Happy Birthday to me. Soon, I will be fifty-three plus three. 53+3. Feels like a blip and an eternity.

All month, I’ve been looking forward and backward in time, watching happiness and pain weal and fade while core memories vibrate like country crickets at dawn or that relentless five lane expressway.

Despite the gentle toll of aging and Death’s sly grin hovering somewhere over there— you must know that our Chi, our life force, our love energy is eternal.

Even when it feels like you’re flying solo, the quality of your life, your love energy is passed on. In other words, we are all strands of the same DNA passing along energy.

My brother who was a chef, who died at fifty three, passed me an essential protein, for example. I’m now a master chef for foodies. At first I wondered: who is this person conjuring up a recipe at six in the morning? Then, one day while rummaging around in the kitchen, I felt his presence. It was as if the light from a star a million miles away had suddenly become visible. A wave of recognition rippled through my body as I saw him laughing. It was no wonder my couscous salad turned into something special.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of aging and how we can live, grow old and die with dignity. Sitting at an outdoor café in Vigo, Spain I watched an old man walking along the bay with his granddaughter. She must have been about five. She flaunted her nimble steps, rattling on in a high pitched voice, wearing the cutest yellow outfit with white ribbons and earrings. The old man’s strides were long and even beside her, listening and smiling, her small hand neatly tucked in his. Back in the States, I thought, the elderly often live isolated in Senior Living communities so this scene felt precious.

Living and aging with dignity takes mindfulness. It’s a calm observation stance to know what matters and what to do with ourselves and others in each moment. It’s making the choice to learn to see differently. With a small refinement of your eyes, you can actually slow down and even pause time to really see yourself, and your loved ones; taking it all in from the time they were young to the moment their forehead started getting creased and wide with wisdom. If you look long enough, you see how fragility sets in and with an exceptional life—flickers of gratitude around the eyes.

Living and aging with dignity is being present to the whole journey. It’s also understanding how our collective DNA carry out its function creating a double helix, meaning: as we help ourselves, we help each other move through light and darkness, joy and sadness, anchoring each other with our strength. I cannot emphasize enough how important perception is and likewise your posture. Keep your eyes focused, your spine straight, head held high with dignity. Notice when you can’t do this, for whatever circumstance, or have forgotten how.

Sometimes, I ask myself: Am I strong enough to live and age with dignity?

I think it’s an everyday practice: to wake up and make a choice to do so, to take small steps forward, in whichever direction, but each step should be taken with care, reverence and again, gratitude.

Sometimes, I think about the steps of so many others, those who are close and far away, and those from our history—who’ve had to endure so much misery and pain and suffering that my heart hurts when I think about it. How could they bear to open their eyes a midst so much suffering or look into a small child’s eyes with hope and dignity?

My heart hurts knowing the deep wounds we carry, there are so many. 

Each morning, I sit in silence and choose to keep my eyes open to loving kindness, to bear witness to my life and yours, to live with dignity, to choose gratitude, to be strong. I breathe in and say, I am strong enough. I’ve been given so much and how is it possible that I’ve received so many blessings in this lifetime?

I must pass light along, like a baton, especially when my legs are tired.