When both my wife and mentor / friend Ruth Kelder go crazy about how great a book is, I take notice. Such is the case with "
Women Rowing North" a book about navigating life's currents and flourishing as we age by Mary Pipher
(author of the renowned
Reviving Ophelia.)
Although written for women, it's a book men should read too. Almost everything she says applies equally to men. And although it isn't written from a Christian perspective, it's exceptionally wise, and well-written.
Like it or not, we all age ... and some transitions are harder than others. Pipher's thesis is this:
"With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that worked for us at an earlier age. [To be happy as we move into middle and old age] we cannot just settle for being a diminished version of our younger selves."
We must not simply age ... we must grow. I believe this is the heart of the teaching of the Christian spiritual tradition: that God's purpose for our lives is that we grow and develop into more loving, powerful, generous, and compassionate people. Just going through the years of life without growing creates adults or senior citizens with the emotional and spiritual development of children.
Pipher emphasizes that part of this growth is learning to accept things that change in our lives, and being deliberate about choosing how we view things. You'll see more of what I mean by that in the quotes below. Here are some highlights:
Suffering and Growth
Even though we all suffer, we don't all grow. Not all older people become elders. Successful resolutions of our developmental challenges don't just happen. We don't become our wisest selves without effort. Our growth requires us to become skilled in perspective taking, in managing our emotions, in crafting positive narratives (ie. re-framing), and in forming intimate relationships. We develop the skills of building joy, gratitude, and meaning into every day.
It's critical to distinguish between choosing to live lovingly and cheerfully and living a life of denial. One leads to joy, the other to emotional death. I have learned from my work as a therapist that secrets, denial, and avoidance invariably cause trouble. To move forward requires seeing clearly.
We don't heal without hurting. For a while, the cure for the pain is the pain. I don't recommend controlling our emotions, but rather listening to them. They are delivering information that is vital to our recovery. We want to fully experience our emotions in both our hearts and our bodies. If we do this, we will gradually move toward healing and hope.
Finding Happiness
Happiness is a choice and a set of skills. We all live within the confines of the world as it is but we have the freedom to frame that world in ways that allow us to be positive and grateful. Once we have made the existential choice to be happy, we can develop a repertoire of skills to achieve this. It is never too late to become a happier person. Hopelessness and happiness are both self-fulfilling prophecies. We become who we believe we can be.
Recent research by Sonjy Lyubomirsky finds that 50 percent of our happiness may be related to our genetics. The rest is determined by a combination of circumstances, attitude, and actions. According to Lyubomirsky, we can most influence our own happiness by re-framing our situations in positive ways, being thankful, and giving to others. We don't have total control, but we do have choices. In fact, research in epi-genetics reveals that the ways we think about our aging can actually impact
our DNA as well as many other aspects of our later years.
Some people can be disabled by a hangnail, while others could be hit by a truck and keep smiling. The difference involves attitude and coping capacities. We can learn to define ourselves by our grit and we can learn the skills to make this happen.
We will find what we look for. When we look for humor, beauty, or joy, we will discover them all around us. Our consciousness is crafted by attention. Happiness requires us to make the choice to pay attention to this and not that. Horseback riders know that the horse will go in the direction the rider is looking. We can learn to look toward where we want to be.
