There’s an old joke about a young man shocked to hear about a man turning 95.
“Who would ever want to turn 95?” asked the young man rhetorically. The answer is “a 94-year-old.”
Last week, the former popular music star Madonna emerged at the Video Music Awards. In some way that was fitting since neither institution has aged very well. The VMAs will cause the average person to say “wait, is that still around?” The answer, of course, is true. Long after MTV jettisoned their raison d’etre to creep into garbage television, long after music videos have regularly appeared on television, the VMAs soldier on, like Don Quixote living far beyond their natural time.
Reports scattered online showed her dressed in almost nothing, having difficulty speaking, and not even knowing what awards she won.
I have no other details because I am not watching the VMAs, so you don’t have to.
The issue is not video awards, or even Madonna specifically. Madonna burst into celebrity status in the mid-80s with a hit song “Borderline.” She shaped her career around vivacious, and often at the time controversial, sexuality. Often she would commingle sexual and Roman Catholic imagery, which truly did demonstrate her overall lack of taste in her younger years.
As she has grown older, the headlines moved from music and style to outrageous behavior, then plastic surgeries and other efforts to outrace aging.
Aging is not simply a natural process. It reflects one of the constant recurring patterns of the universe.
Everything has a starting point, rising life, a peak, falling life, then a conclusion or a death. That includes all in existence that has any kind of dynamism. It is the life pattern of people and also of stars, the celestial kind, not the celebrity.
The universe itself, unless current theories are wrong and they very well might be, follows this same cycle.
In Victorian times, men worked hard to hide their age, even going to the extent sometimes of dyeing their youthful hair with shades or elements of gray. Rising age meant rising knowledge, rising capabilities, rising influence. Older men received more respect because experience was valued more than “youthful energy.”
The matriarch of this world was Queen Victoria, one of the greatest monarchs in both British and world history. In her youth, she portrayed true regal beauty, but it was not her svelte form, big doe eyes, and pursed lips of youth that served as the appearance of greatness. Her greatness came as she aged, working with and learning from great statesmen such as Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Salisbury, and countless others.
As she reached her years of greatest effectiveness, Queen Victoria grew extraordinarily corpulent. Her soft expression hardened into a thoughtful scowl as flushed high cheeks evolved and sank into jowls. Her eyes shed their youthful sparkle and gained the steady light of a great mind.
In her youth, Queen Victoria was hesitant to act.
In her age, the great lady of Europe served as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland as well as Empress of India. She was head of an Empire that controlled 25 percent of the land surface of the globe and all of the oceans.
Queen Victoria served as the personal suzerain of countless local indigenous leaders who pledged loyalty to her Crown in exchange for protection and trade.
Even though British law limited her actual powers as Queen, no monarch in Europe dared to cross her. When her 20-something-year-old grandson, the brashly rude and ambitious Kaiser Wilhelm II, overstepped etiquette in a dispute with other members of the British royal family, she sent him a terse note. It was not a note written to an equal head of state and fellow ruler of an empire. It was penned as a grandmother to a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum. He dared not respond contentiously to her out of deep respect.
Aging means coming to terms with diminishing physical capabilities, but a well-tended mind will continue to flourish and gain. It takes years or even decades for most people to truly develop their mind to their God-given potential. It requires also that adult men and women leave behind the pursuits and desires of childhood and mature into productive human beings capable of handling responsibilities.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” — 1 Corinthians 13:11, the words of Saint Paul.
Putting away childish things does not mean abandoning fun and games in one’s spare time forever. It does mean accepting the mindset of an adult, of taking on and fulfilling responsibilities, of not letting one’s youthful type of desires consume so much time, money, or energy that one cannot function properly as an adult.
It means that one must embrace the challenges that life sets before one, instead of trying to shirk or run away from obligations and responsibilities. One’s roles in life, father, mother, son, daughter, employer, employee, community member, become more important than the whims of childhood.
It means that one must exercise emotional and personal discipline. Emotions to a truly functioning adult are always secondary to getting the job done.
When those who are over the age of majority allow their emotions, especially their negative emotions, to rule them and direct their behaviors and responses, they have not put away their childish things. Instead, they have embraced permanent childhood. The longer one continues in such a state, the sadder that state becomes.
Imagine a world where Madonna put aside childish things and embraced maturity and age. Imagine if her admittedly beautiful and quite distinctive voice followed a mature personality into a Barbra Streisand-type middle age and senior career. Instead of serving as a tired punchline, she’d be respected, perhaps even in some quarters even revered.
Too many men also fail to set aside childish things. A century ago, most men had libraries, workshops, or even laboratories where they spent time in productive or enlightening practices. Now too many men go to “man caves” and try to stretch the false halcyon mid-teen to mid-20s years as long as they possibly can.
One cannot help but to note that Plato metaphorically equated a complete lack of understanding with living at the bottom of a dark cave.
The true halcyon years in a person’s life, if they have set aside their childish things, start in one’s late 30s. Hard work, wise decisions, and mature behavior bear fruit in early middle age when, suddenly, an adult’s opinions and ideas are more respected, even sought after. One is asked to lead and/or mentor others and help them to grow and achieve in their own lives.
The aged mind is a beautiful one. It grew on experiences, relationships, failures and successes both, and learning how the world works and how people operate.
It has much more to offer as it continues to accumulate those experiences. Valuable are these minds and wise are the young people who seek their counsel and listen to their advice.
Embracing middle and old age comes easier to those who have kept their faith. They understand that this world is not the only or the final one, but that heaven awaits the righteous. Fear of death is mitigated by the understanding that it is not the end. One may have some concern for how one dies, but death itself is not frightening. There is no “Dead End” sign there, but a doorway into what comes next.
If one does not have faith and feels that this life is the only one there is, their great fear is very likely of not living the one period of existence they have to their fullest. Fear of death, or of not living life completely, will warp judgment and decisions of many in this mindset. It could certainly lead to clinging to young adulthood or even childhood as long as one can, avoiding the reality that all living creatures must face.
Adulthood is challenging almost by definition, but true happiness only comes from overcoming challenges and obstacles in life. Clinging to childish things, however, only perpetuates the delusion of youth.
As the delusion becomes more untenable, the deluded descends into a figure of either pathos or ridicule.
