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Special Guest Article... |
by
Terry Jones
There are three ways to be an older person. Most are just folks who are pretty much the same as they were when they were young. Then there are the elderly. And others tap the archetypal elder energy within and express "eldership". It is important to reconsider the word elderly by contrasting it to the more ancient word, elder.
The older person who is elder-like knows he or she owes advocacy to the family, the community and the environment. This person, living in the fall and winter of their life, hungers to harvest through a celebration of their long life.
Harvesting the seeds they have sown leads to leaving a legacy, sharing wisdom and supporting the young to make their dreams come true.
The role of the elder in early history differed considerably from what we call the elderly in modern times. The elderly today are a relative small number of people who fail to celebrate their life accomplishments, and remain angry and hurt over harm done to them long ago by people they refuse to forgive.
The elderly live in fear of life and death, or they long for life to end. The elderly older person of today scares the young and reinforces the bias we grow up with about ageing.
The elderly complain about ageing and spend their retirement separating themselves from the young. The elder continues to deepen his experience of living even as he grows older. They are just trying to get through it. The way we think about elders is lost in the way we think about the elderly.
Our fear of death and our consequent desire to stay young gets in the way of expressing elder energy. Out language overflows with words and phrases we use to separate ourselves from old people: relic of the-Past, old relic, out-of-date, not-with-it, old fossil obsolete, over-the-hill old fogey, old codger, old crock, crotchety and decrepit. When the United States was formed in the 18th century the founding fathers turned to the young for their energy and their hunger for individual expression. The "New Americans" wanted to avoid the mistakes and excesses that had reduced their European mother countries into an old, wrinkled, withered, worn-out and patriarchal gerontocracy. Since the Industrial Revolution, the warm and nourishing grandparent had been disappearing. Now on the new frontier the old could not keep up and the new nation become a community of young survivors who lost respect for the old. In response to the bias toward the old, when the young became elder citizens, they assumed they were to get out of the way and enter a state of retirement.
Although for many retiring is joyful, to retire means to withdraw from business and public life. In fact, "retiring" means, retreating, to go backward. The elder retreats in a different way. He retreats into contemplative activities that assist in rediscovering one's spiritual center. The message one gets is that the he or she must move from self to other; from self to community. Sharing one's long life experience is life enhancing. The elder's retreat into contemplative activity usually leads to an increased need to be with and for other people.
If we buy into the American aging model of depletion, recreation and retirement, our long life experience is lost to the, generations that follow. The elder seeks balance intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically. And many retirees find that much of the self-fulfilling aspects of traditional retirement, such as play and travel, don't, in and of themselves, enhance a persons sense of balance. I don't mean to suggest that elders are monks. They do enjoy play and travel.
They probably won't be a shaman or a lama but if they feel like a guru to those who benefit from their wisdom, all the better. An American elder is just an older person who has called upon elder energy from within their soul and psyche. They may dress conservatively or old fashioned. They may drive too slow, golf a lot, garden and enjoy classes taught at the local senior center. What makes them different is the need those around them feel to be in their presence.
The young believe that old age means being elderly. The elder role is an alternative to elderly that is life enhancing, energizes others and calls upon older people to be a resource rather than a social burden.
© 2001 by Terry Jones
In Search of Elders Institute
Terry Jones, author of The Elder Within: Source of Mature Masculinity has been a public speaker and workshop facilitator for thirty years. He has served organizations and businesses including:
Boise Cascade Corporation
International Childbirth Education Association
Lewis and Clark College
Standard Insurance Company
Living Enrichment Center
Hewlett Packard
Mankind Project
Pacific Lumber
National Organization of Men Against Sexism
Georgia Pacific
Key Bank
2001 is the 30-year anniversary of his marriage and the year of birth of Terry's fifth grandchild. Jones graduated with a Master's degree in History in 1970 at Sonoma State U. in California and received another Master's degree in counseling at Lewis & Clark College in 1976. He is a certified mental health counselor, spiritual director and eldering workshop leader.
He co-authored, with Paul Kadota, the book, A Biography of Kanaye Nagasawa, about a Japanese-American adventurer, entrepreneur and spiritual leader. It was published in Kagoshima, Japan in 1978. He also wrote, Also of Men Born, published by Ease Inc. first in 1980 and again in 1996. This was his first book about men.
Jones founded EASE Inc., one of the first mental health-consulting firms to offer employee-counseling services nationally to business and industry in 1979. He is president.
Jones founded In Search of Elders Institute in 1999 in West Linn, Oregon to give his eldering work an infrastructure.
In Search of Elder's Institute
1200 Stonehaven Court
West Linn, OR 97068
Phone: E.108
Fax:
Copyright 2001 Terry Jones, all rights reserved
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