Always Coming of Age

After a long absence from my beloved blog -- I’m back!  Still eager to talk about what life is and can be in our later years, about healthy aging, about expectations of aging --- about how those of us who serve elders can translate our knowledge and positive beliefs about age and aging into environments and organizational operations that reflect these beliefs to the benefits of those we serve.

Have you seen news about Sally Fields’ new movie, “Hello, My Name is Doris”? Sally plays a 60-something who returns to the workplace after the death of her mother and becomes infatuated with a new guy in the office who is in his 30s. 

Fields, who is just a few months shy of her 70^th birthday, was interviewed in the weekly “GO!” magazine published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In the interview Fields describes this new film as “a coming-of-age story about a person of age.”  Then she goes on to say – and this is what I love, and believe --: "Our challenge in life, as human beings, is that we are always coming of age. It's always about transitioning into the next stage. And are you willing to make that change? Are you brave enough to step out of what feels comfortable?

Change – another word for transition -- is the most ever-present aspect of life!  Growth and development is what happens through the process of change.  These changes are transitions.  We are always, in every stage of our life, in transition!!

Some transitions are more noticeable than others:

            Becoming married;

            Becoming pregnant;

            Becoming a graduate student.

            Becoming a mother-in-law;

            Becoming gray-haired;

            Becoming a resident in a different place, a new address

            Becoming an elected official;

            Leaving elected leadership after one’s term is complete.

Note that some of these examples reflect physical changes; some imply profound emotional changes; all reflect relationship changes. It affirms the profound and sacred reality that relationships are at the heart of life.

Transitions take place throughout life.  They are not stages of life that just happen we “retire” or “leave active ministry”. To be in transition is not a sign that one is in later life; it is a sign of change – of the potential for growth and development. Are we willing to be our true, beautiful and more whole selves in our later years or do we too easily succumb to what society tells us “old people” are?

We have potential for growth and development up to and including our last breath.  Think about that long and hard and contrast it with what everything and everybody in our broader society and in the media tells us! May we keep coming of age!  May we keep transitioning in positive, wise, beautiful ways - the way of growth, the way of aging! May we provide that prophetic witness of a merciful God Who loves us with abandon, Who shaped these stages of our life, Who  can create only good!