I woke up with a line from a poem: \u201cOld age is center stage.\u201d In a few days, I\u2019ll be 87 years old, so this line was hardly \u201cnews.\u201d As much as I am aware of old age and deal with it in various ways daily, nay, hourly, is more accurate, what is it I need reminding of by this line from sleep? My first thought was that this was a poem, but my memory only has a single line. So, I will work on a poem. The second thing that occurred to me was the memory of a foreword I wrote for a book on aging. For now, I\u2019ll include that here, for it says many things that are coming to mind under the weight of this line from sleep. I\u2019ll post it here as a Saturday Memory.<\/p>\n
Old age is an opportunity to experience our own deepest mystery. Life\u2019s distractions preclude tending to this mystery before the prospect of death begins to close all the curtains to the outside world. Mystery literally means \u201cseeing with the eyes closed.\u201d We do this when we sleep, and then we see dreams. Dreams, like our DNA, are unique to us. Truth be known, our dreams are an invitation to explore our uniqueness and become an extraordinary resource for us\u00a0as we confront the reality and inevitability of death. We do know that every dream is a story\u2014a mystery\u2014but most people have little or no connection to this reality. This is why it is important for something or someone to point us in the direction of our own unique path\u2014a direction that becomes crucial as death approaches. We don\u2019t need instruction. We don\u2019t need lectures. We don\u2019t need admonitions or dogma. What we need are stories that strike us to the core, stories that can open us up to the most important pathway we will ever experience. What can help is to hear stories of someone who has struggled with the same things we struggle with in old age and as death begins to call our name. An exquisite example is Lilly Iona MacKensie\u2019s book, Dreaming Myself into Old Age: One Woman\u2019s Search for Meaning. <\/em>What I find most compelling about this work is she speaks not with an impersonal, distant voice, but with full-throated revelations of her personal struggles, an inside view that invites connection, that opens one up to her stories, her dreams, and her art in such a way that it becomes a genuine companion<\/em> to one\u2019s own struggles with old age, dying, and death. Read this book now. You will be glad you did.<\/p>\n Russell A. Lockhart, Ph.D.<\/p>\n Author of The Final Interlude: Advancing Age and Life\u2019s End, Psyche Speaks, Words As Eggs<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I woke up with a line from a poem: \u201cOld age is center stage.\u201d In a few days, I\u2019ll be 87 years old, so this line was hardly \u201cnews.\u201d As much as I am aware of old age and deal with it in various ways daily, nay, hourly, is more accurate, what is it I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2156,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions\/2156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}