'Being' and 'Doing'

I have been reading a book called ‘The Spiritual Dimension of Ageing’ by Elizabeth MacKinlay, an Australian nurse and Anglican priest with a concern for older people’s wellbeing. Ten years ago she conducted a survey amongst 75 people over the age of 65 living independently, in an attempt to find out more about this hidden dimension of our lives. Some were religious, some not. MacKinlay started out with the assumption that as you get older you lose a lot of your active, working life but – as we have said in these articles – you are still you, and your interior life may become more important than ever before. ‘Being’ becomes more important than ‘doing’.

It’s a technical book and so far I have skipped as many pages as I have read. ‘Spirituality’, MacKinlay implies, is a loaded word and capable of many interpretations. It is also a fashionable word and reflects our cultural retreat from community to individualism as people think more about themselves than the common good. But the need for meaning and depth to our life remains, and is perhaps more acute as we get older and we lose some of our previous roles as worker, activist, mother or father.

Coincidently, as I was dipping into the book, we had a response to these articles from Carlos who has just had his sixtieth birthday, a traumatic experience it seems. His Buddhist sympathies lead him to believe that "Death" is not the end, but rather a return to the youth of a "new Spring". ‘The most important thing is to try to do good’, he says, ‘and to have a clear conscience. Religion does not mean spiritualism’. In the difficult stage of old age, all our physical and mental problems are caused by our ageing and used "chassis". Death does not exist and old age is just a simple experience for our evolution, he concludes.

Grateful for these comments I agree with his statement that religion and spiritualism are not necessarily the same, but don’t share his faith in reincarnation; although the idea of a new Spring is very inviting. This antithesis between youth and age is perhaps one of the ogres that persecute the elderly – ‘if only I was young again’, suggesting that youth is good and age is bad. The two are different, although of course there is a continuing link in our life-line between them both. We are not as we were. That becomes increasingly obvious. But we are still who we are. More from MacKinlay’s book next time.

Bryan