Helen Luke’s compelling words about the joys possible at great age validate the idea that wisdom is less a function of experience than of maturation. Two people can pass through life with similar experiences, with one falling into the pit of bitter regrets and depressing self-recrimination while the other soars above all that would be devastating earlier in life. The difference is a matter of personal growth.
Luke teaches us in Old Age that we have a choice between getting old and growing old. Growing old means evolving into a personality that transcends chronological age and to some extent, the physical self that defined the preponderance of our needs earlier in life. Indeed, it is in the later years that the mind most easily and naturally takes its place over matter. But that only happens among those with the grace and skill to grow old.
For others, aging is a life event to be confronted. Skin creams, mud baths, massages, Botox treatments, cosmetic surgery, and other means are used copiously in hopes of reversing the sculpting hand of aging. Countless companies depend on people’s battles against aging. But these companies need to deal with the twin problems of shrinking young adult populations and growth in age groups in which many become increasingly comfortable with their aging. As Gratiano says in The Merchant of Venice, "With mirth and laughter, let old wrinkles come, and let my liver rather heat with wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans."
None of this is to suggest that people stop caring about their appearance as they age. Instead, it’s more a matter of many second-half customers being less preoccupied with "looking young" as they age. First-half customers’ concern about appearance is generally stronger because of their greater need to make social statements in how they visually present themselves. A 60-year-old may enjoy her body massages and liberally treat her skin with anti-aging creams, but she is more likely to be doing it mostly for her own pleasure rather than to make social statements. After all, a good body massage is a being experience on an ethereal plane.
Recall Jamie Lee Curtis’s words from Why Marketing Stopped Working: Doing Less with More: "I don’t have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft fatty little tummy. Glam Jamie, the perfect Jamie … it’s such a fraud … the more I like me, the less I want to be other people."
Notice that she did not say, "the less I want to be like other people." She said, "the less I want to be other people." The difference is subtle yet sweeping. Jamie wants to be herself, not someone masquerading as something she is not. She projects authenticity by her words—a virtue paid too little heed in the era of the New Customer Majority. Jamie has renounced the affectations of youth to become a more genuine person who has brought the real self out into the open.
Jamie Lee’s blossoming regard for authenticity raises the bar for others around her. Simply put, her tolerance for BS has sharply receded. As a 25-year-old she might have thought she was genuine, didn’t play games, told it like it was, and wanted the same from others. However, few 25-year-olds in Hollywood or elsewhere will get very far being as forth-rightly honest about themselves as Jamie Lee Curtis now is. For everything there is a season.
Jamie, at 43, exemplifies the Franciscan idea of courageously confronting what can be changed (she can change how she processes her life), serenely accepting what cannot be changed (she knows she cannot alter the fact of her aging), and having the wisdom to know the difference (thus having balance). By integrating the unchangeable fact of her aging into her worldview and comfortably adjusting to the idea that the blush of her youth is fading, Jamie has clearly caught on to the idea that after youthhood comes a higher and more complex state that offers more.
Those who relentlessly confront aging rather than integrating it into their psychic fiber risk not reaching the advanced state of beingness that takes one beyond materialistic striving, beyond what might have been. Preoccupation with stemming signs of aging makes harder the developmental tasks of the Winter of life of discharging pettiness from one’s life, dissolving disenchantments and regrets, and extinguishing the pain of second thoughts about one’s life.