Carol Orsborn on Growing Whole Instead of Old

Sep 30, 2024 09:29AM ● By Sandra Yeyati

Carol Orsborn courtesy of Carol Orsborn

For five decades, Carol Orsborn has been a leading voice of her generation and a bestselling author, having written 36 books on quality of life, spirituality and aging. Her latest book is Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life. Designed to be read weekly over two years with 120 readings, it focuses on the issues and concerns that arise among those that view aging as a path to spiritual transcendence.

Orsborn earned a master’s degree in theological studies and a doctorate in history and critical theory of religion from Vanderbilt University, completing her postgraduate work in spiritual counseling at the New Seminary, in New York City. She served on the faculties of Pepperdine University, in Malibu, California; Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles; and Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. She also appeared on Oprah, NBC Nightly News and The Today Show, and presented talks at the Omega Institute, American Society of Aging and Vanderbilt University Hospital.

What do we get wrong about aging?

There have been two dominant theories about aging that have influenced the stereotypes, and each one gets aging wrong in its own way. The first is that aging is a period of sad, slow decline and the best you can do is try and put old people behind gated communities and facilities and keep them as happy as possible.

The flip side, which has been holding sway and is just as insidious, is called “activity theory”. It keeps older people active—the more active they are, the longer they are active, the better it supposedly is. So, we say things like “60 is the new 30” as we try to extend midlife, turning us into desperate robots.

What is a better way to look at aging?

Getting old is a life stage with meaning and purpose of its own. You have the freedom to choose how you want to live your life. Sometimes you may want to be contemplative, quiet and take time away from the limelight. Other times, you may want to roar like a lion; you might have a lot left in you that you want to give.

How do you define spiritual aging?

The first tenet of spiritual aging is accepting reality as it is while believing that there is meaning and purpose to life. The second is loving yourself no matter what. Spiritual aging treats the process of getting old not as a problem to be solved, but rather as a spiritual experience in and of itself. This is your last chance to embrace all of life and to have the freedom to pick what you want to do because your soul is telling you to do it.

Being a person who is seeking faith is a prerequisite, I would say, and faith means trust that there’s something beyond what we can see with our naked eye because, otherwise, aging and confrontation with mortality is just too unbearable. Without some sort of broader perspective, people either shut down or go into denial or frantic activity.

As we confront physical and mental diminishment, what role does grief play in this spiritual experience?

Grief can shake you from your faith. You can hit bottom a lot of ways and feel that life is meaningless and hopeless. In my book, I talk about a place I call “the void”, where reality outstrips your ability to cope, and you go to a place that feels bottomless, dark, scary and hopeless. Every spiritual and religious formulation that I’ve ever read has a place like that—like the dark night of the soul in Christianity—where the status quo loses hold of you, and yet it also seems like a holy place because it allows you to let go of the illusions and what used to be, and to reconstruct yourself from the ground up in a way that is more in alignment with reality.

How can a retiree emerge with a renewed sense of freedom after losing their identity?

It’s very destabilizing and unsettling to have defined yourself in a certain way for much of your life and then suddenly to have those labels not work anymore, either because you’ve been forced out of your traditional roles, you’ve outgrown them or you’re physically or mentally not capable anymore. It’s extremely painful to realize that the old roles no longer work, and many people do go into a period of mourning. But on the other side of that loss is the freedom to ask yourself what it is that you find interesting to do today and be surprised by the answer—to find out what your soul is yearning for and who you’ve been wanting to become all these years. For most of us, this realization comes on slowly. It might even take five or 10 years to understand.

Is it never too late to find your purpose in life?

Of course not. In fact, I would say the opposite. It takes growing old to finally be able to live with some degree of purity of purpose, because you’re not going to be as distracted by what society’s expectations are of you. For those with physical and mental impairments, there is an opportunity to find meaning and purpose not only despite those challenges, but through them. If you’re taking a walk and you’re going much slower than you’re used to, you’re much more likely to notice the flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, for instance.

However, if you are one of those people who feels that the purpose of older age is to continue in your leadership position or replace one leadership position with another, you’re still running around so fast you’re never going to be able to hear the birdsong, watch the clouds change or understand the joy that can come out of simply being.

As we become more aware of our mortality, what spiritual gifts can arise?

The preciousness of the moment. Discernment to recognize the truths of life—both bad and good. Humility. We waste so much time trying to control things. Facing mortality is the ultimate surrender, and every spiritual tradition talks about the importance of humility, of understanding that you can’t control everything that’s going to happen to you and that there is some sort of power greater than yourself, if you have faith.

I recently stumbled across Ernest Becker’s book The Denial of Death, and he has amazing advice that I’ve taken to heart. First of all, he says that the more spiritual, intelligent and educated you are, the more aware of mortality you’re going to be, and the thing that keeps you from despair is not necessarily traditional spirituality but rather having a project. He believes that facing death is too much for us humans all the time without a break, that we have the right to periods of illusion where we just sort of forget about it, and having a worthwhile project of any kind is a great antidote to despair.

It’s one of the reasons I went back to writing. I found that without a project, I started to dwell too much on the losses I was experiencing. The other reason I wrote this book is because one of the great gifts of older age is recognizing that if you have a gift, this is your chance to leave a legacy. It doesn’t have to be saving the world. Our generation has been told all our lives that we should follow our heart and passion. That was hard when we were in our 40s because if you followed your heart and you wanted to be a poet, you couldn’t make a living at it. But now in your 70s, 80s or 90s, if you want to be a poet, go for it! There’s a lot of late-life blooming going on, tempered by what our hearts are telling us and by our physical and mental abilities. That’s what the reinventing should be about.

Can humor help us in this journey?

Oh my God, yes. But you’re going to have to qualify it because some humor can be bitter and sarcastic. There has to be love beneath the humor. You have to love yourself enough to be willing to tell the truth about yourself; you have to love the world enough to tell the truth about the world; and you have to love the other person enough to tell the truth about them. I think the best humor has truth in it, but you have to have enough compassion, self love, faith—the spiritual qualities—to be playful with what otherwise would probably make you cry.

As we age, we become increasingly dependent on others. What are the spiritual lessons there?

We don’t receive well. The tendency in older people is to complain or get mad at their caregivers if they aren’t giving to us perfectly. So it’s about learning to receive, but also learning to be gracious and put other people before yourself—allowing your caregiver to feel good about what they’re doing for you. It takes a generosity of spirit to accept care from another person, even when it’s against your nature or they’re not doing it perfectly. People that are old are at their best when they have generous spirits. They’ve dug deep enough to understand that at the bottom of self love is generosity.

Look, the bottom line is learning to love and be loved. I keep learning every day. I have family issues that may never resolve, but I’m learning I’m beloved anyway. I’m seeing love where I didn’t see it before. I’m having compassion where I didn’t see it before. At 76, suddenly I see things with so much depth that I see the love that was there all along. Maybe the resolution doesn’t happen—the estranged child doesn’t always come home—but in our hearts, we can find resolution for everything. In mainstream media and stereotypes, aging is seen as a time of decline, but for me, I now see aging as a time of culmination. You can not only grow old, you can grow whole.

Sandra Yeyati is national editor of Natural Awakenings.