Aging is an inward journey
A big part of aging is loss. Loss is not something you can think your way through or out of
Lewis Richmond, meditation teacher, musician, software entrepreneur, and author of Every Breath, New Chances: How to Age with Honor and Dignity - A Guide for Men
The first thing I hear in the middle of the night are the roosters. Full of energy at the beginning and hoarse at the end, their cries resonate in the valley, and they pull me forcefully out of my dreams. I cling onto the remaining crumbs of sleep until the bell gently rings. It’s 4:30 am. I get up from my thin mattress, fold my blankets, and slip into my daily clothes. With no electricity and no warm water, the shower is an after-lunch appointment in this monastery in the countryside of Northern Thailand, where I’m participating in a silent meditation retreat. In previous experiences, I used to dread my sitting cross-legged in a veranda before sunrise, chanting words of an unknown language before drifting into meditation. Now, this is the moment of the day I enjoy the most. Because of its intimacy, its closeness with a nascent day. Later on, I will follow the queue of participants sneaking behind the monks on their way to the village for their morning alms. Leaving the monastery, the dirt road skirts along a rubber tree plantation and then dwells amongst rice fields as far as the eye can see. Some crops are still brilliantly green whereas others, closer to harvesting, show here and there paint strokes of warm yellow color. While walking, I can spot an occasional crab peeping at us from the grass along the road and a metallic-blue dragonfly resting on an ear of rice. Some dark green hills border this enchanted micro-cosmos. Closer to the village, a barefoot young woman, wearing pink and white pajamas and a jeans jacket is kneeling outside her gate. In a millennial-old gesture, she takes some fruits from a basket and puts them into the monk’s bowl. She joins her palms and bows to him.
One of the highlights of a day with few diversions—walking meditation, sitting meditation, working meditation, repeat—is the monk’s talk on the verandah. On a low platform in front of a simple altar with a bronze Buddha statue surrounded by fresh flowers, the abbot sits in-between two meditating young monks, and he recalls. “An American tourist got stuck in this valley a few years ago. His motorcycle broke down, and while he waited for it to get fixed, he stayed in the village where someone suggested he visit this monastery. When he arrived, we sat down and talked, and he was surprised to find a monk who could speak his language. He told me he had quit his job in Philadelphia and was traveling in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam to think about his future.”
One of the monastery’s cats is trying to catch a butterfly. It’s a young cat with darting muscles under a black and white fur, an animal used to getting his snacks. The butterfly escapes its paws, and the cat jumps onto the low platform where the monks are sitting. “I told the American tourist, isn’t it curious how graciously we take whatever happens when we are traveling? If your car breaks down in your everyday life, you might get mad, you stress over so many things. But when you travel, it is different. When I was traveling as a young monk, I stopped to look at people washing their clothes in the river. I thought it was a very poetic view. Maybe we take everything so lightly because we know it is temporary.” On the left side of the platform, the cat is sitting on the young monk’s lap, finding a comfortable spot for a nap. “Even our life doesn’t last forever, it is temporary, but for our mind, it is difficult to grasp our impermanence,” ends the monk. On his left side, the young monk has re-joined his hands together, circling tenderly the cat that fits perfectly in that space without the monk having to adapt his position to the furry guest.
I received Lewis Richmond’s answers to my interview questions upon my return from the retreat. Lewis has been a meditation teacher, a musician, and software entrepreneur. He’s also the author of Work as a Spiritual Practice: A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction; Aging as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older and Wiser and, more recently, Every Breath, New Chances: How to Age with Honor and Dignity - A Guide for Men. I’m always interested in the way other cultures look at aging. Lewis’ story stands out because, as an experienced Buddhist meditation teacher and longtime practitioner, he can spark that much needed dialogue between Eastern and Western philosophies.
P.S. The cat came back later on that day while we were sitting on the verandah. With a dull thud, he landed on the head of the Buddha statue, hopped onto the table among the flowers, and then descended on the platform. In its jaws, there was a mouse. Unmoved by this seemingly blasphemous event, the abbot chuckled and said, “Sometimes, he likes to show us off.”
So many conversations about aging focus on how to resist it. How do you explain it?
When I did research for my first aging book and searched Amazon for “aging,” almost all of the books that came up were about cosmetics, diet, exercise, botox and yoga—i.e. how to resist it, how to look younger. No one likes to think about aging—except young children, who can’t wait to be older—because aging inexorably leads to ill-health, decline, and (unmentionably) death. It takes a certain courage to face aging head-on. Some people are more inclined to do that than others.
On the other hand, what is the purpose of aging?
Interesting question. Many people would say it has no purpose, it just happens (and they wish it didn’t!). I would say the purpose of aging is to fulfill your sense of having lived a full life, with its ups and downs, and to convey that contentment and wisdom to people who are younger (children, grandchildren, and others). For myself, having recently moved to an adult community in the wine country of California, and having dissolved my software business, life is much calmer. I’m able to concentrate on writing, online teaching, composing music, and reflecting with pleasure on the full trajectory of my own life, its successes and setbacks.
Your earlier book about aging is Aging as a Spiritual Practice. Why did you choose this title that resonates with Work as a Spiritual Practice?
Work as a Spiritual Practice was a best-seller, largely, I think, because of (at the time) the intriguing title. It was a first-of-genre connection of work to spiritual life, as the title says. It also reflected my situation, at the time I wrote it, of being in the corporate workplace after 12 years living in a Buddhist monastic retreat center. Once I had established that there is a spiritual aspect to work, it wasn’t much of a reach to imagine a similar connection to aging—again, Aging as a Spiritual Practice was a first-of-genre book in its field. There were hardly any books out there that were making that connection of aging to spiritual life. In readers’ responses to both books, I have understood how much people search for meaning and higher purpose in their lives—a spiritual dimension, if you will. It’s a universal need, I think, one that is often difficult to find in today’s post-modern, frantic, consumerist society.
In terms of experience and personal growth, what do we miss if we avoid embracing the process of aging?
In the book I reference the eight life stages developed by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. He speaks of aging as the final stage of life, in which we either come to terms with the life we have lived (what I call in the book “deep acceptance”) or we don’t, in which case, he says, we stagnate and feel regret or resentment. So it’s important to fulfill this final stage of life in a wholesome way. Finding that “wholesome way” is one of the challenges of retirement. In the book I discuss the different flavors of retirement, including “encore careers,” such as offering your professional skills on a volunteer basis, or even learning a whole new skill from scratch. It’s so exciting to re-invent yourself as you age. Otherwise aging is hard. In a workshop I led, a recently retired high-school teacher—a man—exclaimed, “What am I supposed to do now? Just lie down and die?” I tried to gently suggest that there might be other possibilities and new beginnings.
If we embrace the process of growing old, how can it transform us?
In ancient times, when life expectancy was short, growing old was a privilege. Old people were greatly respected for their knowledge and longevity. Today aging is more of an inward journey. Recognizing that, my book Aging as a Spiritual Practice offered a variety of Buddhist contemplative practices as one possible map for that journey. The Buddhist worldview honors the inner life as our highest calling, for it is there that life’s deepest meaning can be found. In the end, meaning is life’s most important value.
Without meaning we tend to wither and become lost. With a rooted sense of meaning our life can flourish and shine, even in old age, even in illness. Meaning changes with each stage of life, but the meaning at the end of life can be the most deep and universal if we embrace aging as an opportunity to find the deepest, or even ultimate, meaning of our life. “I’ve had a great life,” a retired physician once told me on his deathbed. “I have a great family, I loved my career as a doctor and healer. And now it’s my time to go. No worries, no regrets. I’m happy.”
You wrote that the real work of aging is emotional and intuitive. What does that mean?
I emphasize these qualities—especially in a book directed toward men—because men (and sometimes women) tend to deal with aging intellectually, as something to think your way through or out of (diet, cosmetics, and exercise again!). But a big part of aging is loss, (loss of youth, vitality, sexuality, attractiveness, job opportunity, on and on) and loss is not something you can think your way out of. Loss is a feeling that dogs you day and night. You need to shed tears, intuit new possibilities, feel your way like a person in the dark to a new kind of acceptance. I summarize the principle you need to make this journey as, “Vulnerability is strength.” When you are feeling your way in the dark you are vulnerable. To say it is a strength may seem counterintuitive but it is not. Vulnerability is like a willow branch. It bends with the wind but doesn’t break. Emotion and intuition are the tools that can help you find that strength.
With Every Breath, New Chances, why did you decide to specifically write a guide for men?
I discovered that the majority of the readers of my earlier aging book were women. If men bought it, it tended to be for their mothers. On the whole, women tend to deal with aging better, if only because they are more used to changes in their physical body, and times when they don’t feel well (PMS, childbirth, menopause, etc.). Men tend to preserve the illusion of youth longer, and many men today tend to be more ego-identified with work and career. Retirement is a big shock, often, for men. I am a man myself of course, I know about all this terrain. Once again, I looked around and didn’t see a book like this for men. Not exactly first-of-genre, maybe, but first of something. Men need help in this area.
I read that you moved out of your big house into a smaller house in an age-friendly community. What are the most surprising things you learned in this journey about the inner dimensions of getting older?
The move was really stressful. Remodeling and then selling one house while looking for another to buy was hard. For a while we lived out of a motel room—essentially homeless. As a man and former small business owner, I was used to being in control and in charge. Suddenly I wasn’t. I was buffeted by many outside circumstances, unknowns, and crises—including the fact that my sister was dying; I was, as I said above, vulnerable. Plus I wasn’t sleeping. The whole process was indeed a metaphor for what happens in aging—in fact, retiring and downsizing are common aging crises for older people.
In the midst of all this, I was also writing this book (or trying to)—sometimes at 3 in the morning in the motel room, plagued with insomnia. I learned two surprising things. First, writing about this whole experience while it was happening made the work a better book; that wasn’t the original plan but my editor supported this change. In adding material about my own personal crisis, the center of gravity of the writing shifted from being “journalistic” and instructional, and became more intimate. In exposing my own vulnerability to the reader I was, I realized, actually modeling the core message of the book—vulnerability is strength. My vulnerability.
And second, in opening myself to my own fear and anxiety became the very basis for how I got through it all. Of course my wife was with me through it all; we traversed the journey together. It wasn’t the first time. When I was desperately ill (and, my doctors thought, dying) from a brain infection, her love and continuous supportive presence was a critical factor in my survival and recovery. That’s another important message for my male readers: trust your wife or partner. Let them into your inner life, they know you and love you better than anyone.
I really like your definition of “Conscious aging.” Can you tell us more about it?
Many people age un-consciously, i.e. they don’t really think about it, it just happens to them. Maybe when they go to the doctor or look in the mirror they think about it. That passive, almost victim-like approach exacerbates the feeling of loss as we age. You can get angry, resentful, even depressed—I’ve seen this myself in my work with men, and the therapists and psychologists I consulted confirmed it.
In contrast, if you take aging on as a challenge and an adventure, consciously pursued, then all of that turns positive. Being conscious means steering the ship as it sails into the unknown rather than being steered by it. And that is the key; if aging is something that just happens to you, then it can be an affliction. If it is something that you consciously influence and make happen, it can be far more positive.
