Being human

The approach of my 80th birthday and the recent news of the inhuman treatment of some elderly patients in hospital create worries about my future. I remind myself of what I said in my last blog (13th Feb) and simply witness these worries going on in my head and let them be. They subside. Angela Tilby’s Thought For The Day this week says all I would want to say on this subject, coupled with an article in yesterday’s Times newspaper by Raymond Tallis a retired doctor. We are talking simply about how one human being treats another: a problem not confined to the way medical staff treat old men and women.

What’s the difference between an elderly human being and a younger one? Almost nothing. For example we ‘wrinklys’ have this in common with Olympic champions: we are living at the limits of our physical abilities. There is of course the wisdom which the elderly are supposed to possess but T. S. Eliot was on to something with his words from East Coker:

Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.

And the next two lines are:

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

Medieval scholastics dissected wisdom into three parts, memoria, docilitas and solertia. Against the pull of nostalgia and remorse memoria enables a positive and creative use of the past leading to integrity. We all (young and old) have painful, embarrassing, guilt ridden episodes which have a habit of suddenly popping up to distract us. The older one is the more of the past there is in which these memories lurk and the present can afford less distraction, for example in the form of paid work, to keep them buried. Dealing with them is part of the work of memoria at any age.

Docilitas is the capacity to be alert and attentive to the present: impossible unless the work of memoria has been undertaken. A week after retiring to my home town I thought I recognised a childhood friend. Fortunately before I said anything I realised that what I was ‘seeing’ was a recollection of the friend as he or she had been forty years ago. I was looking at a youth when I should have been looking out for someone with wrinkles. Searching for favourite childhood spots along the riverbank, I realised that trees grow a lot in fifty years! The view had been completely transformed. The riverside is still dear to me (therapeutic even) because of its childhood associations but the trick is to have developed sufficient objectivity about my memories to enable a certain docilitas: a kind of recollected or meditative stance offering a surer footing in the present moment including the riches of one’s past. Paradoxically, in spite of the shortening future, the older person has fewer time pressures. Standing in the supermarket queue I can forget about imagined deadlines or the insult to my self esteem which being kept waiting might suggest and simply observe and meditate on what I see around me.

Then there is solertia: a simplicity, openness and flexibility which is good for human flourishing at any age. Getting rid of things, which ‘might be useful’ is part of it and so is resisting the blandishments of consumerism. Solertia is akin to poverty, which, together with chastity and obedience was an essential part of the monastic life. One cannot be open and flexible in the present if one is encumbered about with too many cares of this world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined chastity as ‘the total orientation of one’s life towards a goal’. We might redefine obedience as being true to the goal of becoming truly human. Then we would be able to make hospitals (and the ‘big society’) places where everyone is given the dignity due to them.

Archbishop Trevor Huddleston told the story of how he said to a friend, “You know I’m getting to the age when I think twice about buying a new suit.” “Really?” replied his friend, “I think twice about buying green bananas!” So that’s what distinguishes the elderly from the young!!