Aging As Both Burden and Blessing

Soul Collage by Donna Mazzola

This reflection, inspired by the Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, the Sunday honoring Grandparents and the Elderly, and youthful celebrations in Rome, explores aging as both burden and blessing. Drawing from Joan Chittister’s, The Gift of Years, it invites deep reflection on life’s later stages through spiritual, emotional, and personal lenses.

Each theme is examined in two parts:

• Burden: The emotional, physical, or spiritual challenges that can arise with age: loss, invisibility, loneliness, irrelevance, or nostalgia.

• Blessing: The hidden gifts in aging: freedom, wisdom, depth, spiritual clarity, gratitude, and renewed relationships.

The reflection reframes aging as a rich time of growth, potential, and contribution, urging older adults to embrace the present, share their wisdom, and continue dreaming. It closes with Mary Oliver’s profound question: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”— a call to live fully, at any age.

Regret

The burden of regret is that unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.

The blessing of regret is clear—it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life and in an entirely new way. It urges us on to continue becoming.

Fear

A burden of these years is the possibility of giving into the fear of invisibility, of uselessness, of losing our sense of self and human obligation. Fear tempts us to believe that life is over, rather than simply changing.

A blessing of fear in these years is that it invites us to become the fullness of ourselves. It comes to us in the nighttime of the soul to tell us to rise to new selves in fresh and exciting ways — for our sake, of course, but for the sake of the rest of the world as well.

Joy

A burden of these years is to fail to get beyond the bitterness of having been displaced, and to not see that being moved quietly from all the platforms of life is also to be free of the stagecraft that goes with them.

A blessing of these years is to wake up one morning and find ourselves drunk with the very thought of being alive. Then, wherever we go, we will spread the joy we have finally been able to find in ourselves.

Authority

A burden of these years is the temptation to consider ourselves obsolete and to waste this precious time only on ourselves. It is the temptation for ultimate narcissism.

A blessing of these years is our involvement in the important questions of the present, so that the time to come will be more Blessed than our own because of the insights we both preserve in ourselves and pass on to others before we go.

Transformation

A burden of these years is the possibility that I might stay more buried in my losses than aware of my gains.

A blessing of these years is the transformation of the self to be, at long last, the self I have been becoming all my life — an oasis of serenity in a world gone sour on age, the very acme of life.

Newness

A burden of these years is the feeling of finality that comes from knowing that this time, however much of it is left, is the end time. Then, the weight of what is left to be finished in us takes its toll.

A blessing of these years is that we can, if we will, make them something glorious, a kind of shooting star across the sky of the human race.

Accomplishment

The burden of a lack of commitment to accomplishment means that we have moved into a period of suspended animation, that aging is nothing more than deterioration. The truth is that aging means aging. Nothing more, nothing less. It is just us, grown ripe.

The blessing of a commitment to accomplishment is that, as we continue to bring our considerable skills, experience, and insight to bear on the present needs of humankind, we will certainly become wiser, definitely spiritually stronger, and more than ever, a blessing to the rest of society.

Possibility

A burden of these years is to assume that when the great change from being defined and limited by the past — however good that might have been — is over, that life is over.

A blessing of these years is to realize, early, that this stage of life is full of possibilities, full of the desire to go on living, to seize the independence, to create new activities and networks of interesting new people.

Adjustment

A burden of these years is that we must consciously decide how we will live, what kind of person we will become now, what kind of personality and spirituality we will bring into every group, how alive we intend to be.

A blessing of these years is being able to live so open heartedly, and to adjust so well, that others can look to us and see what being old can bring in terms of life, of holiness, of goodness to make the world new again.

Fulfilment

A burden of these years is the awareness of all that we missed for so long while we sold our souls to the idols of time.

A blessing of these years is the equanimity that comes from knowing that none of the side roads of life were really wasted. Truth is, we learned something invaluable on each of them. We learned that to come to fullness of life takes absolutely nothing at all beyond the development of the best in ourselves.

Mystery

A burden of these years is to fear the ever approaching mystical before us, as if the God-ness we have known in life will desert us in death.

A blessing of these years is coming to see that behind everything so solid, so far, so familiar in front of us, runs a descant of mystery and meaning to be experienced in ways we never thought possible before. To become free of the prosaic and the scheduled and the pragmatic is to break the world open in ways we never dreamed of. In this new world, a mountain, a bench, a grassy path is far more than simply itself. It is a symbol of unprecedented possibilities, of the holiness of time.

Relationships

A burden of these years is that being alone, bad as it feels, is easier than doing what it takes to be with someone else. It would be so much easier now simply to close the sunshades of our soul and give up. So much easier simply to wait for death to claim what has already died in us: Love for life and a trust in its essential goodness. So, we cut ourselves out of our own lives and watch them wither away.

A blessing of these years Is that they offer us the chance to be excited by new personalities, new warmth, new activities, new people all over again. Does it demand that we fall in love? No. But it does demand that we love someone else enough to be just as interested in them as we are in ourselves. It demands that we set out to make tomorrow happy.

Tale–Telling

The burden of tale–telling is to think that by avoiding our responsibility to be part of living history, we will stay forever young. By not telling those who follow us the stories of what it took to get here, we fail the harvest of our own life and the ploughing days of theirs.

The blessing that comes with tale–telling is the awareness that we have now done our duty to life. We have distilled our experiences to the point that they can become useful to someone younger.

Letting Go

A burden of these years is the temptation to cling to the times and things behind us rather than move to the liberating moments ahead.

A blessing of these years is the invitation to go light-footed into the here and now because we spent far too much of life preparing for the future rather than enjoying the present.

Learning

A burden of these years is the fear that they bring nothing but incompetence to our once competent selves.

A blessing of these years is that we find ourselves at a time of life when we can finally concentrate on all the things we have ever wanted to learn and know and, as a result, become an even more important, more focused, more spiritual person than we have ever really been before.

Religion

A burden of these years is the fear that I have not practiced religion well enough to be worthy of the life it teaches.

A blessing of these years is the awareness that yes, it must be true: there is a God who created me and is calling me upward, beyond myself, home.

Freedom

A burden of these years is to allow all the stereotypes of old age to hold me back, to hold me down, to stop the flow of life in me.

A blessing of these years is that they give me the chance to break the bounds of a past life and to create for myself a life more suited to what I now want to be.

Success

A burden of false success is that it creates an artificial standard that follows us through our entire lives, leaves us in a state of perpetual discontent, too tight to enjoy retirement, too invested in the elements of life that do not last.

The blessing of real success lies in the fact that sometime in life we come to the point where we never over emphasize any one side of it again. Instead, we come to live easily and fully in all aspects of it.

Time

A burden of these years is to allow time to hang heavy on my hands, to simply sit and wait for life to be over, as the Irish say, “knocking another day out of it till the great day comes.”

A blessing of these years is to realize what an important and lively time this final period is. I can, if I will, bring it all together into the final and the very best of me.

Wisdom

A burden of these years is to accept the notion that nothing can be done to save a people when a younger generation is in charge.

A blessing of these years is to have the opportunity to take on the role of thinker, of philosopher, of disputant, of interrogator, of spiritual guide, in a world racing to nowhere, with no true human goal and no lived wisdom in sight.

Sadness

A burden of these years is the desire to give in to the natural sadness that comes with the shifting journey through life, to cling to it in ways that make living in the present a dour and depressing prospect.

A blessing of these years is the realization that there is still so much for us to do, that we have no time, no right, to be sad.

Dreams

A burden of these years is that we come to think that our dreaming days are over. Then we become mired in the past. We refuse to grow. We make past mistakes the definition of our entire life.

A blessing of these years is the power to dream and the freedom it takes to bring to the awareness of our world — however small, however boundaried it may be — the voice of reflection, of reason, of feeling, of penetrating awareness that comes with having been wrong and setting out to right it.

Limitations

A burden of these years is the possibility that we might succumb to our limitations as if they were a real definition of age, rather than an aspect of everyone’s life.

A blessing of these years is that we know at last what really matters, and the world is waiting to hear it, if only we will make the effort and don’t give in to our limitations.

Solitude

A burden of these years is that we fail to understand that solitude is the gift that comes naturally to those who take the time and the space to explore their core.

A blessing of these years is that solitude is their natural state, the gift of reflection that makes the present a contented place to be.

Productivity

A burden of these years is that we begin to think of ourselves as superfluous simply because we are no longer tied down to a corporate schedule anymore.

A blessing of these years is that they enable us to change our part of the world in ways that are as expressive of us as they are good for others.

Memories

A burden of memory in these years is to allow it to meld us into the company of people, time, and places long gone by.

A blessing of these years is to realize that our memories of both the sad and the happy, the exciting and the secure, the successes and the failures of life, are meant to guide us down these last roads with confidence — the confidence that having negotiated the demands of the past, we may safely walk into the future.

Future

A burden of these years is to assume that the future is already over.

A blessing of these years is to give another whole meaning to what it is to be alive, to be ourselves, to be full of life. Our own life.

Immediacy

A burden of these years is that we might allow ourselves to become less than what we are able to be, more quickly than we ever should.

A blessing of these years is that they call us to go down deep into ourselves in order to discover everything we are. Now. Right now.

Nostalgia

The burden of nostalgia is that it takes us out of the present and immobilizes us in the past.

The blessing of nostalgia is that it can serve to remind us that just as we survived all life before this, grew from it, laughed through it, learned from it as well, we can also live through this age with the same grace, the same insights— and this time, share that audacious spirit with others.

Spirituality

A burden of these years is the danger of giving into our selfish selves.

A blessing of these years is the opportunity to face what is in us that has been enslaving us, and to let our spirit fly free of whatever has been tying it to the Earth all these years.

Loneliness

A burden of these years is that we will hole up somewhere and mourn our age, our changing life, our losses.

A blessing of these years is that we will make ourselves available to the world that is waiting for us, even now, even here.

Forgiveness

A burden of these years is that we run the risk of allowing ourselves to be choked by the struggles of the past.

A blessing of these years is the ability to see that life does not have to be perfect to be perfect; it only needs to be forgiving — and forgiven.

Outreach

A burden of these years is the danger of considering ourselves useless simply because we are no longer for filling the roles and positions of youth.

A blessing of these years is the freedom to reach out to others, to do everything we can with everything in life that we have managed to develop all these years, in both soul and mind, for the sake of the rest of the human race.

The Present

The burden of the present is that it brings us to face the fleetingness of time.

The blessing of the present is that it brings us to understand the fleetingness of time — to live with the Spirit in full bloom.

Appreciation

The burden of having to confront these last years, lies in the fear that I have missed most of my life while I was living it head up and running.

The blessing lies in the fact that I’ve not only come to appreciate the past, but also the present in a whole new way.

Faith

A burden of these years is that we are tempted to think that once we ourselves are no longer powerful enough to work our will on the world around us, we are at the mercy of a cruel universe.

A blessing of these years is that we are now beginning to trust in the life-giving God we do not see, more than we have trusted in the accessories of life which we have seen both come without guarantee and go without warning.

Legacy

A burden of these years is to give in to the thought that personal spiritual growth is no longer an issue for us and so leave the world a legacy of incompleteness.

A blessing of these years is to have the time to complete in ourselves what has been neglected all these years, so that the legacy we leave to others is equal to the full potential within us.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

~ The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Mary Coffey at artfulspirituality.com

Song for Meditation: Arise My Love  (link) Deirdre Ni Chinneide, Celtic Passage (2007).

Arise My Love my beautiful one,

Sí Gaoithe na hoíche

Éist leis and bhfonn,

A ardófar an duarchas a líonn ort go tromIs

a glaofor do Anam thar muir is thar tonn.

(Listen to the call that releases from darkness and

calls the soul over land and seato a love that dances and is free)

May your voice be heard in this land.

Do you dare to take my hand?

Arise My Love my beautiful one,

Sí gaoithe na hoíche éist leis an bhfonn.

(The wind of the night listens to the tune.)

For the shadows that haunted your dreams in the night

Can reveal to your heart

There are wonders in sight.

May your voice be heard in this land

Do you dare to take my hand?

Fear keeps you away

When it's Love that calls you to stay.

Arise my love my beautiful one (repeat)

Si gaoithe na hoíche éist leis an bhfonn,

Is ag deireadh do thuras tríd an ngaoith

Oscail is éist le do chroí (repeat)

(Open and listen to your heart.)