The Ninth Decade of a Life Well-Lived
My life has been very long. My life has gone by in the blink of an eye. So is the conundrum of relentless aging and exquisite fulfillment.
I am an octogenarian, so I have a rich accumulation of information about life, at least about my life, and I experience the physical results of old age. I am the matriarch of a family of four children, thirteen grandchildren and six great grandchildren. I am very blessed. The environment in which we live does nothing to prepare us for the end of life, rather the entire world suffers from distorted definitions of happiness and success and runs an exhausting treadmill of consumerism and materialism leading to increases in depression and despair.
These are not my inner feelings, however. I feel an exuberance, a sense of pride that I have lived so long. My husband and I recently celebrated our 58th wedding anniversary and we revel in the harmony that exists in our ever-growing family. We all love each other and seek opportunities to be together. I am well-educated and have enjoyed a thriving career. What more can an old woman need?
Since my teen years I have been drawn to try to figure out why I exist. What is the meaning of life on this planet? The religion of my childhood taught the inevitability of either heaven or hell after death, but that never did feel right to me. Why would a loving God even consider an option to cast me into an eternal inferno?
Of prime importance to me in these waning years is the quality and steadfastness of a strongly felt inner life. We cannot deny that there is a plan of development to nature according to which we exist within a precise evolution. This process gradually brings us to the appearance of questions about the next state. And this is where life has now taken me.
My thinking has gone something like this. There is no reason for my existence unless there is some ultimate purpose for life, and I simply can’t believe that the abundant and lavish planet on which we all exist just popped out of nowhere. So, there must be a prime mover, some intelligent force that put it all in place. But why? Is there such an attitude as lack in such a supreme power, maybe some sense of a deficient existence? And if so, what would fulfill that need?
I was stuck here for a very long time until, quite by accident, I discovered a teaching that explains it all. The Creator wants others to exist that are like Him, that have his qualities. He also wants them to desire to be like Him, because if they do not choose this, there is really no purpose for them to exist. So, out of His thought of creation, He initiated the development of the universe through four stages — inanimate, vegetative, animal and human. The first three stages evolved in order for humanity to have a place to do this work, and He gifted us with its enormous abundance and beauty.
Then… stuck again. What exactly is this work? Nature itself gives us the answer when we begin to understand Her laws. Many mathematicians and philosophers have identified laws, such as gravity, the laws of chemistry and physics, Newton’s laws of motion, Boyle’s laws of the nature of gases, and many more. But there are other, more subtle laws that are just as binding, but not as universally recognized. These laws are aligned with where nature wants to take us.
Of these, the principle law of nature is unity, and deriving from it are laws of interdependence, altruism, harmony, balance, interconnection. So, we have a template for our relationships with each other and with all of nature. Within these laws is the principle of taking what we need for survival and leaving what’s left for others to take. This idea sparks alarm on the political level, but in nature this happens instinctually. It is a major factor in the perpetual balancing act within the system.
Taking only what we need from the environment brings us to that inner state in which we derive all our pleasure from caring for others before ourselves. And there it was, life’s purpose. I discovered this late in my life and am now only beginning to understand what it means. And the icing on the cake is that I’m immersed in a study, with others, that is teaching us how to reach this state.
I am a happy octogenarian!