Thoughts on Ageing

Lately, I have been thinking about ageing.

It started with the shocking discovery of 5 or 6 white hairs on the top of my head. I haven't had my hair coloured since I was pregnant with my younger daughter, who just turned 2. I've no plans to dye my hair for the sake of covering up the evidence of ageing. I may change my mind though.

Today, I was thinking about something that I find profoundly difficult: my mother. What will I do as she gets older? Will I have to move back to Sg? If I don't move in with her, what kind of example will I be setting for my children? And if I do move in with her, how will I cope with all the emotional baggage from our dysfunctional relationship that I've suppressed for the past 20 years?

I read stories of people who have done well and wonder: what will it be like when my husband and I are in our 50's? Will we have the means and the options, or will our options be constrained by our means? Will we do a sea change - retirement village - aged care home, and all the way the gradual but certain descent into physical immobility?

Two things remind me of how transient and irrelevant all these anxieties are. At the same time, the words of One who was both human and divine come back to me. Life is meant to be abundant and joyful, regardless of one's personal circumstances and bank balance.

"I am come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly."

The first is The Shack, one of the most uplifting and transforming books I've read.

In the novel, Jesus tells me what I need to know but have forgotten.

• Life is about relationships, not rules.
• God is about love (a verb), not religious institutions.
• God doesn't want to make people into Christians; He wants to invite them into a relationship with Him.
• We have inherited a broken world because Adam sinned. If he had resisted the temptation to be independent, we would still be living in Eden and not arguing about climate change. Evil comes from wanting to be independent of God.
• God does not cause tragedy; tragedy is the consequence of a sinful and imperfect world that has chosen to live apart from God. But God can use tragedy to bring about a greater good.

The second reality check came from reading about the work of FoodWaterShelter, an Australian non-profit organization dedicated to buiilding villages for orphans in East Africa. The FWS team is made up completely of volunteers. One of the founding members talked of how she felt frustrated by the inability of many of her countrymen to appreciate how far they had come and how blessed they are.

This extract from the FWS website neatly sums up why they operate the way they do:

By using our creativity and forethought from the outset, we plan to impart knowledge and skills in a way that ensures we are needed less as each project develops. This not only allows us to concentrate our services where they are most required, when they are most required, but also ensures we leave the locals a legacy – and that’s what we’re all about.

In the end, life is about living well and dying well. Raging against the dying of the light is not part of the Grand Design. Life was not meant to be held on to tightly, but is just a doorway to something better and more beautiful and more lasting than our limited minds can imagine. In the meantime, there is much abundant living for me to do, and that includes thinking more about how I can make a difference in the world and less of how I can get those things I think I need to live well (like financial freedom: what does that mean anyway?).