Older, But Never Old

A fifty-five-year-old friend of mine was talking at a party about being middle-aged. His wife heard him and said, “So who do you know who’s 110?”

How old is old? Everyone is old to someone. To a six-month-old baby, a toddler is old. Ask a ten-year old how old is old, and he’ll say, “Thirty.” Yet there are people who are sixty and think of themselves as middle-aged.

North Americans are obsessed with two things: educational degrees and staying young. I asked an advertising copywriter with one of the major cosmetics companies, “When you write cosmetics ads, what are you really selling?” He answered with one word: “Hope.”

People fight age. Our society does not respect its elder members as Eastern societies do. For us, aging is a problem. A friend recently noted that when he was twenty, he would read the obituary of a fifty-five-year-old man and think, “Why even put it in the paper? An old-timer has faded away.” Now that my friend is sixty-five, however, he sees young men of sixty and seventy passing away, and he’s alarmed by the attitudes of the present generation. When I heard another friend call himself old for the first time at seventy-six, I was offended. It’s a serious problem when people begin to refer to themselves as old, because they’ve put themselves in a classification that is almost a holding pattern for death. They’re starting to coast to the finish line. I wrote my friend a memo telling him that although he was older, I hoped he’d never be old. Older is a fact, but old is an unhealthy attitude.

Advantages of Aging

I think it’s important to look at some of the benefits of getting older.

Selective tension. Older people are usually tense over important things, not over everything. So many young people are tightly wound about everything; their lives have no peaks and valleys. As we get older, we shouldn’t lose tension; we should apply it selectively.

At one point in my life I was playing too much golf and relaxing more than I should. I noticed my memory starting to slip. When I ran into a well-known psychologist with whom I’d done some lectures, I mentioned my memory problem and equated it with getting older. He said, “No, that isn’t the cause; it’s your lifestyle that’s become more relaxed. You’ve lost the tension in your brain.” He went on to explain that the brain is a muscle, and he suggested that if I brought back some constructive tension into my life, my memory would improve.

This challenged me so much that I accepted a few speaking engagements on topics that would produce tension. And, as he said, I found my memory returning. Tension is part of living. Getting older means we should be able to allocate tension to the important instead of the trivial.

Clarified values. Growing older gives us an opportunity to sort through our value system. For example, we can better see that the spiritual really does contribute more to our life than the economic. We finally agree with the philosopher who says that who we are influences our happiness much more than what we have.

The temptation then, of course, is to try to force our value structures on younger people. We don’t stop to realize that they haven’t had the years of maturity and growth that gave us discernment about values. We can’t expect them to accept these values with the same certainty we have. We can only encourage them to accept them on the basis of our experience until their own experience ratifies our beliefs.

Experience. Proverbs 20:29 says, “The glory of young men is their strength; of old men their experience.” Experience turns knowledge into wisdom. We can get knowledge in school. Take that knowledge, run it through the press of experience, and out comes a concentrate—wisdom.

Experience, like faith, is a teacher. Faith is better than experience, because faith keeps us from bearing the scars of experience. But none of us is able to live totally by faith, and we have to experience some things for ourselves. If we have good sense at all, however, our experience leads us to the same place faith would have led us. Experience convinces us that “this is the way, walk ye in it.”

Increased excitement. As the years get shorter, the excitement of fully utilizing them can be a great motivation. Don’t become depressed or afraid; feel the same excitement as if you were racing in the Indianapolis 500 and had completed 490 miles. The last ten miles become the most exciting because they’re really the reason you ran the first ones. All your experiences, friends, associations, and education are consummated in these last years. Since most older people need less sleep, they can utilize this time more fully.

A good friend of mine is completing his Ph.D. studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He’s seventy years old. He’s taking the degree from one of his former students. This is what age does for you. It lets parents live long enough to see their children become their teachers. That’s exciting.

Sure, only a small percentage of the people are doing this. But it’s the elite who are fighting against the deterioration of nature and the lack of health, who are seeing that the last act is always the best.

Tested relationships. As we grow older, relationships mature. For example, when you’re first married, you don’t know what to fight over. Because of inexperience, you fight over anything. You even quit going out with a couple who likes French restaurants because you like Mexican ones. But as we get older, we recognize areas of importance and unimportance. We have tested our friendships over the years and know which ones will hold and which ones will always be tentative.

Yet we don’t get cynical about the ones that won’t hold, for we know most relationships are temporary or partial; thus, we look for others who give as well as get. We learn to trust people with whom we can talk confidentially. They’re interested in our kids and what happens. They’re real. And it’s a wonderful thing to know we will probably be neighbors in heaven.

Death is part of life. A final compensation we have as we grow older is the full realization that death is a part of life. When I look at death, 1 Corinthians 13:12 is an important verse to me: “Then shall I know even as also I am known.” Whatever I have known up to now has always been fragmentary. The great hope of heaven is that I will know the full truth.

I think it’s important, as we go along through life, to create certain thirsts that death will satisfy. The thirst for truth is one of these; so are the thirsts for immortality, for God, and for renewing relationships with those who have died. You start developing these in your teens; you feed them and nurture them, and then when the time comes to die, it’s really graduation.

I hope my death is not a long, painful one. I used to ask for sudden death, but I decided that was basically selfish. When we hope for sudden death, we’re thinking about ourselves. One woman who lost her husband after a short time of illness said, “I’m so thankful we had time to say goodbye.”

I’m not much to insist that mourners celebrate because this seems phony to me. There’s a time of loneliness and mourning that should be carried out; but I’m afraid we are getting to a place in some churches where we impose celebration. But the person who died can celebrate; he or she can sing a hallelujah chorus because the race is finished.

Perils of Aging

When I was in my forties, I started making a list of things I would not do once I was old. I knew I’d need the list, because then those things would seem so natural to do. There were little things on it—like not sleeping with my mouth open and not wearing mismatched clothes. But several more important things on the list are worth exploring.

Reminiscing. A television talk show host told me that if she interviewed someone on the air who dwelt on the past, she never asked that person back. I say, good for her. I get sick and tired of listening to people reminisce. They apparently have no present and no future; everything is past. That’s a sure sign of age.

Class reunions hold no interest whatever for me. There is so little to talk about that everyone talks about the past. And if you’re objective about it, very few people have come anywhere near the potential of their life. So you’re suddenly faced with this horrible thought: these people, who were going out to do so much, have done so little.

When I talk about reminiscing, I’m not talking about the study of history, which we analyze and learn from. Reminiscing is simply trying to relive the best parts of the past while believing it is something worth revisiting. Part of maturing is learning you can never go home again. Once you get out of bed, you can’t find the warm spot again.

Unfair comparisons. As we get older, we tend to make unrealistic comparisons. We talk about the good old times and the quality merchandise we had when we were young. I remember the quality crank that spun a Model T Ford engine and the quality piece of wire that pulled out the choke. I also remember the tremendous amount of aerobic exercise it took to get the thing started and the danger of breaking your arm if it kicked. Was it really so much better than sliding into some leather-seated sports car and driving off in regal splendor?

This tendency to make unrealistic comparisons , carries over to the church. The preacher doesn’t preach the old-fashioned gospel, we say. I had fun once at a preachers’ convention by getting up and expounding about how we needed to return to the old-fashioned forms of the faith; how we needed to go back to reverence for the old-fashioned Book. The longer I carried on, the more amens I picked up. Then I said, “What I mean is, let’s really go back to the old-fashioned circuit riders, when people only had to go to church once every three months.” Graciously, they didn’t stone me, but those preachers gave me stony silence.

There’s always a danger when we compare the present with the past, because we usually compare the bad of the present with the good of the past. It’s like buying a new business: right away you see the benefits of an unfamiliar operation, but you overlook the disadvantages and liabilities. Only after you get into it do the liabilities stare back at you. We have to say, “The past had its good points, but my memory is selective, and I cannot compare objectively.”

Predicting. Every economist, when he gives his forecasts, should state his age in the first line. He ought to say, “I am sixty-three years old, and my predictions for the economy are thus and so.” That’s because as people get older, they either become very pessimistic or Pollyanna optimists.

People who are not truly excited about the future take refuge in blind optimism: “Young people are great; the country will survive; right will win.” It’s all a spiel. The other extreme, of course, is to become cynical and pessimistic. A realistic view of the future is hard to come by because there’s a fine line between cynicism and idealism.

A cynic and an idealist, if they’re objective, will see the present exactly alike; it’s the future they’ll see differently. The cynic, because of his bitterness, says the future will be exactly like the present. The idealist says it doesn’t have to be; change can come, improvement can be made, an individual can make a difference. Every age suffers its pessimists; every age needs its idealists. The Christian must remain an idealist.

Responsibilities of Aging

Getting older brings us several new challenges.

Be a mentor. We can make a contribution to younger people. I am deeply grateful for two or three mentors in my life. The best way I can express my appreciation is to be a mentor to others. I feel a real responsibility to be available to younger people who find help in my advice. At least five men from thirty-five to fifty years of age currently look on me as their mentor.

Young people need more than anything else someone they respect who believes in them. A woman said to me, “You were the first to ever believe in me.” I was thrilled. She’s capable and wellknown now, but there was a time when people didn’t believe in her. When you reach back to the younger generation, it’s not to criticize but to coach. I won’t force my coaching on others because then they would be threatened, offended, or hurt. Coaches and students need a spirit of mutual respect.

I’ve refused more young people than I’ve accepted; many come to con me into helping them do what they want to do without any thought of accepting the changes I think they ought to make. Part of the wisdom of being older is to say to these ambitious young men and women, “You are not for me. You’re trying to get, not give.” One of the ways I can tell is when they try to impress me rather than listen to me. If I give them a thought and they try to give me two, I know they’re not for me.

Let God evaluate your contributions. Aging is like spending money: if you had $1,000 and you’re down to the last $50, there’s a certain depressing realization that you may not have invested it but just spent it. Many people think they have wasted their lives. I received a letter from a well-known man who said, “I want to confess that for fifteen years I have been doubtful of my true contribution to life.”

If we think too much about this, as we grow older, we feel guilty about it. The greatest help to me in this area has been a growing belief in the sovereignty of God. God doesn’t depend on me to save the world or even run it. When I was young, I acted as if God must be tired; that he wanted to take a vacation and was training me to take over. Then I realized God doesn’t get tired; that he can work for good even in my mistakes. This led to a great release from the fear of missed opportunities.

God evaluates our contributions in light of our opportunities. When people say, “If I had my life to live over again, I’d do it differently,” they are assuming they’d be different people. But God knows we lived it as we were, and only God can say whether we were good or bad. The man who spent seventeen years in jail missed a lot of opportunities to do good, but he also missed a lot of opportunities to do bad. These things we have to leave with God.

Live in the unique. Living with a certain relaxation is a great freedom of the Christian faith. We’re too often tempted to substitute legalism for discipline. Discipline we’re responsible for, but legalism we’re not.

When I sit down to do some planning (and I think God is pleased that I do planning; it shows respect for life) I ask, “What are the unique things in this period of my life that I can do?” When one’s children are small, for example, that’s a unique period. Grandparents sometimes try to raise grandchildren like they should have raised their children. Their responsibility to their grandchildren is not the same as it was to their children. We must recognize what is unique to each of life’s periods and then live it that way.

Take the example of the woman who didn’t have money to go to the beauty parlor when she was young and beautiful. Now when she is older, her husband hits it rich; and suddenly we see her wearing the clothes she would have liked to wear when she was thirty, and she’s trying to get the beautician to make her look youthful. The whole effect is artificial. She’s not living in the uniqueness of her stage in life.

Maintain a sense of humor. Much of our humanness is comical. We all make so many mistakes that we have to learn to laugh first at ourselves and then at other people.

I went to a convention and was handed a lapel button. When I wore it home, my wife asked me what it said because she couldn’t read it without her glasses. I said, “I won’t tell you. Go and get your glasses.” She did, and we had a big laugh about it when she read the button: “I go for older women.”

A good sense of humor usually indicates a person has been able to turn the world over to God. As a business executive, I’ve always insisted that my subordinates delegate my job to me. I resent any of them trying to take over my job. I try to delegate their jobs to them, and I want them to return the favor.

Our relationship to God is similar. We needn’t get tense about the way God is running the world; we can trust him with it. If I wanted to be a little bit mean, I would say that some of the older preachers preaching the imminent return of Christ give me the feeling that he must return soon because there are no more great preachers to turn the world over to. God can handle it all, and the lubricating effect of good humor can help us accept it.