Tag: St. Benedict

Getting Old in the Time of Trump

From the outside, one might think that seniority is in ascendancy.  One might even think we are living in a gerontocracy.  For the last decade or so, we have had elderly presidents and elderly leaders in congress.  We have one of the oldest senates in history, with an average age of sixty-four.  At seventy-nine, Trump is even older than I am; one might expect that this senior president would have more compassion and respect for the elderly.  One might, of course, wish that Trump would have more compassion and respect for everyone.

Before I lay out some of the problems with growing old in the age of Trump, let me acknowledge that there was a senior tax cut in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”  Beginning this year and ending in 2028, it increases the standard deduction for individual seniors by $6,000.   Thank you, Donald, but it hardly makes up for the angst you have caused in other areas.

Elders have a long list of things to worry about these days.  Relentless and inhuman immigration enforcement has meant that nursing homes and seniors who need home care are having more and more trouble finding caregivers.  Lack of immigrant help on the farms (along with tariff increases) has meant that food prices have increased.  With the war on alternative energy, there are predictions that energy costs will rise and air quality will decline.  Medicaid cuts mean that the impoverished elderly have become more vulnerable as benefits – including potentially nursing home care – disappear.  Medicare and Social Security seem vulnerable in ways that we have not seen for many years.  And we feel we have to defend ourselves against things we don’t really understand, but which the government is letting loose on us – like AI and cryptocurrency.

Senior citizens worry about the increased dissension in the country and within our families.  Trump loves a good fight, and he surely doesn’t mind turning us all against one another.  There seems to be little common ground between Trumpers and liberals, and this dissension has invaded Thanksgiving dinners, weddings, even memorial services.  Seniors fret about children who don’t speak to each other, holiday dinners that are no longer events to be looked forward to. We all fret over family members who can’t be pried away from the particular biases of Fox News.

One of the saddest stories in this regard was the one that the wonderful author Marilynne Robinson told about her own mother, who had moved into an assisted living center and was soon spending her days watching conservative television with her new friends, and bemoaning that her daughter was receiving awards from Obama, who she was sure was a Muslim.

“With a little difficulty we [her mother and herself] finally reached an accommodation, an adult friendship,” she writes. “Then she started watching Fox News.” Her mother and her fellow retirees began to share “salacious dread over coffee cake,” fretting over the rumored “war against Christmas.” “My mother lived out the end of her fortunate life in a state of bitterness and panic, never having had the slightest brush with any experience that would confirm her in these emotions, except, of course, Fox News,” Robinson writes (quoted from a review of Robinson’s What Are We Doing Here? in the NYTimes).

Elders worry about their children or grandchildren who are losing their jobs (even those formerly “safe” federal jobs) and those who might get sent to fight in our own cities. Grandparents (who lived through most of the relevant diseases and know whereof they speak) decry the parents who refuse to vaccinate their grandchildren.    Mostly this is  because they worry about the grandchildren, but it is also because we are afraid of catching the flu, Covid, and other bugs that the children will now be more likely to bring with them when they come to visit.

Old folks with fixed incomes and limited resources know well how the volatility in prices, the stock market, and national mood can make a good day into a fretful one.  The news relays one crisis after another to our fearful ears.   The current shutdown is making travel worrisome; we have a family wedding next month which involves air travel, and we can only hope things will be more normalized by then.

But none of these things is the worst of it.  The worst of it is that Trump displays the stereotypical idiosyncrasies of the elderly – radical conservatism, miserliness, covetousness, blind willfulness, vengefulness.  There are many fine and thoughtful old people; there are many seventy-nine-year-olds that I would trust with my life.  Last week I talked about models for getting old.  The worst thing for old people about Trump is that, in my opinion, he is the very worst of models – both for us elders and for all the younger people behind us who are getting older every day!

And there is one more thing.  He makes us afraid.  As I finished this blog entry, I waffled about whether to publish such outright criticism of our president – not because one shouldn’t criticize the president, but because he is also the very model of vindictiveness.  There, I have said my piece on this No Kings Day.

One last reminder, the negative stereotypes of old age that Trump represents go back to Horace and beyond.  We might compare Saint Benedict’s more positive view of aging as a gift to be properly used.  In the Prologue to his Rule, Benedict tells us that if we grow old it is by way of a truce with God, so that we may have time to “amend our misdeeds” and “to safeguard love.”  Just sending that out there.

Projects of Our Old Age

As I sat down to write yet another story for my blog and pick out yet another piano piece to practice for my piano group, I realized I was in dire need of a new project.  For clarification, I am defining a project as an ongoing, long-term undertaking.  It may or may not have an end; for instance, it could be drafting a novel or the mastery of the Chopin Nocturnes.  (The latter would have no end in my case.) It usually takes more energy than I have these days to start something from scratch every time I sit down at my keyboard (computer or piano). This is how Simone de Beauvoir defended the need for projects in our old age:

…there is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work.  In spite of the moralists’ opinion to the contrary, in old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in upon ourselves.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that “turning in upon ourselves” in old age is a bad thing, and – in general – de Beauvoir trends far too negative about old age.  (She softened up as she aged.)  Old age offers a time for review and contemplation, and yet there is a need for something more active in our lives.  Some old people just do not retire from their vocations/avocations; some make family their project, caring for grandchildren or others in need. I have known elderly people who built model railroads or created unique birdhouses.  But we all need something of our own which gives us some feeling of accomplishment or worth.  And it does not matter whether it is ever completed.  I sometimes hear writers or scholars fret about taking on a large project when their time is getting short.  This always reminds me of a conversation between Wendell Berry and Thomas Merton (wouldn’t you like to have been at the table?) recounted in an interview Wendell Berry had with Tim DeChristopher entitled “To Live and Love in a Dying World.”  Berry is speaking:

It was the Shakers who were sure the end could come anytime, and they still saved the seeds and figured out how to make better diets for old people. Thomas Merton was interested in the Shakers. I said to him, “If they were certain that the world could end at any minute, how come they built the best building in Kentucky?”

“You don’t understand,” he [Merton] said. “If you know the world could end at any minute, you know there’s no need to hurry. You take your time and do the best work you possibly can.” That was important to me [Berry].  I’ve repeated it many times.

That piece of wisdom is important to me, too.  One thinks of the European cathedrals that took generations to complete.  Or Johnny Appleseed.  Or the Thoreau’s Artist of Kouroo.

But this ruminating still leaves me looking for a project.  I have file drawers full of manuscripts (fiction) I could edit and rework, but they hold little appeal.  For some reason when I have grappled with a problem in story or novel, the fine tuning fails to interest.  But in mid-life, I authored a lengthy dissertation (abstract found here) about the changes in our views of old age (as read through literature) that ensued with the start of the Enlightenment Period, at the dawn of Modernity, and I have long wanted to get back to it for two reasons.  For one, I am much older.  I finished my doctorate in my early fifties and had spent considerable time being the oldest student in the room.  My dissertation topic proves that age was on my mind.  But I want to review it from the perspective of my seventies.  I am not sure I was correct in my conclusions.  Or, at least, my generalizations lacked the texture that my own aging has added to abstract thoughts about what it means to grow old in a culture of progress, in a cult of youth, in an era of a deteriorating planet. 

I hope that there might be something in that research worth sharing.  I found it fascinating to look at how people in different ages regarded old age; it reminded me that our paradigm is not the only one.  Truly, in earlier eras not so many people reached old age as do now, but some did and the possibility was always there.  And ancient and medieval sources had much interest in the scope and purposes of a long life.   In the 6th century, Saint Benedict saw old age as a “truce” with God wherein we had time to “amend our misdeeds;” In the 14th century, William Langland saw senescence as an active enemy that knocked out his wits and his teeth.  Shakespeare saw aging as a time of loss; for him, the last stage of life “is second childishness and mere oblivion; /Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Sans everything.  I centered my dissertation on the encounter with the Struldbruggs in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The Struldbruggs lived so long that the language and culture around them became unrecognizable, and they lived “under the Disadvantage of living like Foreigners in their own Country.”  Any of that sound familiar?

So, I hope to start that process soon and will post excerpts here from time to time.  Projects in old age do not have to be intellectual; they do not even have to be easily definable.  Tell me about your own projects, and look at my story “Again and Again and Again” for an example of one woman’s project, an undertaking both physical and mental, serving the purpose of such projects – keeping us whole in a time of dissolution.

The Purpose of Old Age


I recently encountered an anthropological theory to explain why women evolved to live beyond their child-bearing years. It is called the “grandmother hypothesis” and posits that having post-menopausal women looking after the kids and tending the home fire worked to ensure the survival of the species. (I could find no such hypothesis about male longevity – but that is another subject.) This hypothesis made me think, as I often have, about what the purpose of old age might be. Or (and better), what purpose can we give it?

Literature gives us an array of meanings to choose from. The “grandmother hypothesis” reminds me of Willa Cather’s wonderful story “Old Mrs. Harris.” Mrs. Harris takes care of her daughter’s family, sleeps in a room off the kitchen, and comes from a culture where “every young married woman in good circumstances had an older woman in the house, a mother or mother-in-law or an old aunt, who managed the household economies and directed the help.” Mrs. Harris has no “help,” so she does it all herself, and her neighbors feel sorry for her, until they realize at the end that Mrs. Harris is doing exactly what she wants to do. While it is hard on the old bones, “the moment she heard the children running down the uncarpeted back stairs, she forgot to be low. Indeed, she ceased to be an individual, an old woman with aching feet; she became part of a group, became a relationship.” There is a special kinship between her and the young ones she tends so solicitously. She was “perfectly happy.

On the other hand, the elderly Lady Slane (in Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent) pushes her family away so that she will have time to reflect on the past and meditate on her life. Lady Slane characterizes such time as “life’s last supreme luxury.” Similarly there is an old custom in Buddhist societies of the old “going forth” into the forest or ashram to spend the last part of their lives in contemplation.

The very elderly speaker in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead concludes that old age is for forgiveness – and love: “ It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.” So, we live long enough to forgive others. I can tell you from experience that if you outlive the “others,” forgiveness is easier. And then there is Saint Benedict who says in the Prologue to his Rule that “our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds.” So we live long to forgive and be forgiven.

In fact, old age in the Bible is often seen as a reward for faith and good living. Abraham and other Biblical patriarchs died at “a good old age” for a job well done. “If thou wilt walk in my ways to keep my statutes, and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days” (1 Kings 3:14), says God to Solomon. In this way, the purpose of old age is to reap one’s reward for work well done, and many retired people indeed look at their “golden years” this way. This attitude has been very lucrative for the cruise industry (until Covid).

Again and again, the Bible exhorts the old to find purpose in sharing their wisdom: “The glory of the young is their strength; the gray hair of experience is the splendor of the old” (Proverbs 20:29). Similarly, in his Republic, Plato (and he was surely talking about the grandfathers rather than the grandmothers) thought that those over fifty should turn to philosophy, but also take a turn at being an officer of the state, “regarding the task as not a fine thing but a necessity.” As I have noted elsewhere, we have many elderly leaders these days – but I am not always sure they come at it from the attitude Plato would have them adopt.

Emerson posited that the best use of leisure at the end of our lives would be to “run to the college or the scientific school which offered the best lectures.” Bolingbroke wrote an essay in the 18th century about the role of study in retirement, stating that the old mind “may continue still to improve and itself” as compensation for the decline of the body . But Seneca and Montaigne rather disdained the view of an old man as a pupil. Montaigne does, however, draw a distinction between studying and being instructed. “While it is creditable for every age to study, so it is not creditable for every age to be instructed. An old man learning his ABC is a disgraceful and absurd object; the young man must store up, the old man must use.”

In her book The Coming of Age (recommended if not always agreed with), Simone de Beauvoir says that the only way to make old age meaningful is to have projects:

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work. In spite of the moralists’ opinion to the contrary, in old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in upon ourselves.

Yes. But. She also says (and all of this is in her conclusion to the book) that it is fairly inevitable that “illusions” will vanish and “one’s zeal for life pass away.” And we must consider these projects carefully; Carl Becker (Denial of Death) posits that many people engage in “immortality projects,” sometimes doing tremendous damage while trying to make sure that their name never dies.

Carl Jung, who uses the metaphor of times of day in his essay on “The Stages of Life,” says that each stage has its own program and the purpose of the evening of old age is to be reflective, “preoccupied with himself.” He agrees with the anthropologist that there must be a meaning to our longevity. “A human being would certainly not grow to be 70 or 80 years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species to which he belongs. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.” And he is firm that we should not try to be young. It is as ridiculous for us to take on the goals of youth as it would be for youth to spend its time reflecting on its death.

Finding a purpose in old age is clearly an individual quest – or it should be. If we take our motivations from internet ads, glossy content, or paperback advice, there will be nothing individual about it. I have no answers for you, but leave you with the good advice of Seneca:

It is disgraceful for an old man or one in sight of old age to be wise by the book. “Zeno said this.” What do you say?… All those men who never create but lurk as interpreters under the shadow of another are lacking, I believe, in independence of spirit.

If you want to think about the grandmother hypothesis some more, you might try my story “Common Enemy.” The title comes from Sam Levenson: “The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.” Of course, no one who is not old enough to be a grandparent will have any idea who Sam Levenson was or why this is funny.

Money, Time, and Old Folks

Covid has turned the world upside-down in some strange ways in relation to age, time, and money.  Let’s start with the money.  We old folks – with our social security, pensions, savings, and Medicare – are perhaps a little better off than some.  We don’t have jobs to lose, children to feed, college loans to pay off.  We are in appreciably more danger in other ways than the  younger folks (see earlier post), but we are arguably a little more economically secure for the time being.

In relation to money, old folks have a long history of being classified as covetous, miserly.  Going back to Horace (Ars Poetica), the old man is described by his “desire for gain, miserliness, lack of energy, greediness for a longer life, quarrelsomeness, praise of good old days when he was a boy, and his condemnation of the younger generation.”  Famous examples of old misers might include the fictional characters Ebenezer Scrooge and Silas Marner.

Of course, in times when there was no provision for the elderly except perhaps the good will of one’s children (remember King Lear?), it made sense for old people to hang onto their money.  Neither do the old have the time or energy to start again.  When Benjamin Franklin admonishes a “Young Tradesmen” to “[r]emember that time is money,” one can only wonder if the implication is that the old – with little time left – are poor by definition?

Incidentally, time and money are intimately related – as was most apparent in the early Christian church’s opposition to usury. One of the Christian arguments against usury was that all time is God’s time, and that charging interest is profiting from something that belongs to God.  For many years, the term has been used only for the crime of charging exorbitant interest, but there was as time in the Christian church when no interest at all was allowed, when belief in usury was a heresy.  But where would the modern economy be without usury?

Similarly, using probability tables to predict life expectancy for annuity and insurance purposes assumed that someone was betting on one’s death, and that someone (other than God) was sure enough of when our “number would be up” to put money on it.  When life insurance came into being in the 18th century, there were many who thought that it also was a heresy, a presumption.  Only God could know when our time was up.

Here is the paradox: We older people have time, and yet we are running out of time.  Retired and quarantined, we have oodles of hours on our hands when we might not be able to count on years, or even months.  It is a strange situation.  One might consider Wendell Berry’s view that “time is neither young nor old”:

I know I am getting old and I say so,
but I don’t think of myself as an old man.
I think of myself as a young man
with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither
young nor old, but simply new, always
counting, the only apocalypse.

As we watch some young people flaunting the quarantine rules and endangering the lives around them, our lives, it seems that perhaps they think they have plenty of time.   They do not think that Covid will kill them (and statistically they are correct), and they do not think about dying much at all.  Neither did I at their age.  And yet, the elders – who are busy trying to make peace with the nearing end – see the possibility that the “truce of old age” (St. Benedict) will soon be broken, our lives will be precipitated into immediate danger.  Usually, as in war time, it is the young who are in danger, fighting for the elders and others at home.  This time we are the potential casualties.  It is a topsy-turvy world.

For more perspective on how Covid is exposing (and creating) stress between the old and young, see my post, Covid-19 and the Generational Wars. This situation is taking on a new dimension as we begin to open the schools.  Children and young adults seem to be at low risk, but how about older teachers, custodians, librarians, and bus drivers?  For a fictional take on the generational gap, you might try “Common Enemy.”