Do I dare eat a peach?

 

All the talk of Joe Biden’s unfitness for the position of president of the USA must have others of his age—80 plus—wondering about their own fitness. Most of us octogenarians are well aware of our physical limitations, I think, but mentally? How can I know, for instance, if the lines I’m writing are logically sound, or if they fall somewhere between inane and gibberish? How can I know if my diminished capacity can be trusted to make such a judgment? And what if my friends are too kind to tell me when to close my laptop?

Hearing an aging loved one tell the same stories to the same people every day has the able-minded nodding knowingly and cluckingly (that’s a word, isn’t it?). We’re obviously too kind and too hip not to know that people experiencing obvious dementia deserve to be “handled with care,” and we’ve devised places and strategies to preserve for them whatever dignity is still possible. But it’s not dissimilar from the pain-relieving, ointment applying, chair-exercising, pill popping we do to extend physical fitness; no strategies, no potions exist for the arrest of the aging process.

To be one-hundred years old is certainly remarkable, but to be one-hundred and fit to be president of the local condo book club, let alone president of the USA, well that would be a stretch.

Even when I am old and gray,
    do not forsake me, my God,
till I declare your power to the next generation,
    your mighty acts to all who are to come. (Psalm 71:18)

 Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding? (Job 12:12)

A question relevant to any age: “Isn’t wisdom found among the aged?” I’m pretty sure that the question as posed in the book of Job has to be reconsidered in every age. The question doesn’t imply that wisdom is a particular characteristic of the aged, but that the wisdom that experience brings can fruitfully be sought among the aged. And it should be. The aged are keepers of a people’s history; a knowledge of one’s history is relevant to making life-giving choices.

But “Isn’t foolishness also found among the aged?” Most certainly, and we all know, I think, that there’s some truth to “There’s no fool like an old fool,” but leave that for another day.

There are other reasons for considering the aging process in a given generation, in a specific place. The aged are by far the most demanding demographic when it comes to health care; the baby boomers of the 1950s are many, and constitute the aged cohort of today. Funeral homes in the late 2020s and early 2030s will be very busy. Although we might find such analyses interesting, our individual concerns are more likely to be about where grandma will live once independence is out of the question. “Not with us, thank you very much. That could never work.”

It's one thing to talk about the aged, to declare who’s mentally fit enough for this or that. It’s another thing to be old. How to live well into old age is wisdom that’s found predominantly among the living elderly. No institution—churches included—should neglect the acknowledgement of at least that valuable pool of understanding.

Time for a nap. Have a nice day.