Betty Friedan coined the term. Remember her? The Feminine Mystique? Published in 1963 it sparked the second wave of feminism in the US. The first wave got us the vote in 1920, the year my father was born. Before the second wave, women who had been employed during the years of WWII were sent back to the kitchen, ready or not. Domesticity was romanticized. Betty helped women who wanted more than an idealized stay-at-home role to find their voices.
I'm loving this newer book, The Fountain of Age. It treats age as an adventure, not something to be solved or denied. The book is well-researched, from the perspectives of gerontology to continuing-care communities to men and women aging with vitality.
One chapter is called "Intimacy Beyond the Dreams of Youth." I can identify with that. Who knew? One man told her, "I'm closer to my wife than I ever was. Now I guess we're secure and comfortable enough in ourselves to accept the intensity of our intimacy. We have a deep, intimate, intense closeness now--the honesty of it I never conceived of. We could be physically touching each other, close as in sex, but if you're not emotionally there, you don't really touch each other." "I can take the feelings I used to run away from," the man continued.
The book was written after Friedan turned 60. At her surprise party, she noted that some of the toasts had an edge. I'm reminded of some of the birthday cards that treat even 40 as old. Although the book was first published in 1993, it's still timely. After all, we've figured out that there's no fountain of youth, but why not a "Fountain of Age?" The idea of each age as a developmental stage, including old age, where what's no longer useful is shed and new satisfactions arise.
Friedan found that people who denied aging, feared change and competed with the young were in many instances depressed. But others not like that were blossoming. Men who were not tied to the masculinity of youth blossomed. Women and men no longer tied to a job blossomed. Those who structured their days in ways that had meaning for them blossomed. She found people who survived loss of spouse or divorce, cancer or heart attack, redundancy or retirement--all those difficult transitions--but kept or reached a comfort level with themselves. Inner meaning replaced external yardsticks of success.
Certain things, she discovered, are not reduced by age. Upon premiering a new dance at age 96, Martha Graham said, "Sensitivity is not made dull by age." In later life a physician became a collagist, an art that I love.
She found that opportunities to be in "Flow" are not reduced in age. Quite the opposite. I had no idea that this concept was identified and named by the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (b. 1934). He defines flow as involvement lying between boredom and anxiety. A person in a state of flow is mentally absorbed in the challenge and pleasure of an activity but without self-consciousness or anxiety about performance. Flow takes energy and effort. It's not passive. It's usually experienced when pursuing a goal. When we're having an adventure we're often in a state of flow. I felt like that last weekend when we searched out waterfall after waterfall in Western North Carolina.
So many people Friedan interviewed felt accepting of themselves in a way they had not when they were young. Their ambitious striving and years of discontent were over. The men had moved beyond that brutal machismo so bruising to boys. Both sexes had found new intimacy and new creativity. All these positives should help us age without fear. Age is part of the path we're all on. Our mindfulness, self-care, meditation, parenting our children, using our talents, contributing to the community, loving ourselves and others, are moving us forward in the search for wholeness as we age.
This book makes me think. What I've had to let go, hard as it is, has not deprived my life of meaning. All of us say yes to life in spite of death. We may face inescapable suffering, but go through it with courage and dignity, with "Amazing Grace." When we need to, we find new roles for ourselves. The old need to be empowered, but so do we all. Maybe someone next will write "The Fountain of Life."
Nina Naomi
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