What I've Learned To Transform Growing Old

THE RELATEDNESS OF ELDERS
 
Relatedness is the degree of connection or association between different things. Consider relatedness as the connection between objects, processes, concepts, and/or human beings. How people and things relate to each other.
 
Relatedness can be used in various contexts, such as biology (genetic relatedness), linguistics (word relatedness), and cognitive psychology (concept relatedness). Here, the context is elder (experiential and philosophical relatedness).
 
The relatedness of an elder is recognizably different than most other people. That’s what makes them elders. First, elders recognize that their relatedness determines who they are and how they see the world. They understand that relatedness can be a conscious act, not an unexamined passive act. Change your relatedness; change how you see the world, how the world sees you, and how you see yourself.
 
Elders understand their relatedness determines their perception of self, others, and the nature of their reality. That allows elders to relate in a distinctive way to their own humanity, which fundamentally changes their relatedness to everything else.
 
Elders' relatedness to growing old, death, past deeds, failures, emotions, thoughts, and life itself now gives them increased peace, equanimity, joy, and appreciation. Emotionally and psychologically, their relatedness reduces anger, frustration, fear, disappointment, and upset. The relatedness of elders much more “lets it be.”
 
Elders’ relatedness is different because of an elder’s existential foundation. An elder’s philosophical approach emphasizes their existence as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of consciousness. No blaming others. No faulting others. No condemning others. No denouncing others. The buck always stops with them.
 
The elders’ existentialism emphasizes their individual existence and to take full ownership of their subjective experience. Which in turn determines their relatedness, their sense of meaning and their identity. Elders are, “The way it is, is the way I see it.”
 
Relatedness, in this context of elder, shapes an elder’s intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. Their relatedness establishes their connections with others, which further shapes their understanding of themselves and their purpose.
Elders both intellectually know, but also now intuitively know, that who they are in the world is a function of their relatedness. Who and how they relate to the world is self-determined. No one’s doing it to them.
 
What is critical for elders in this existential realm is authenticity, being true to oneself. Elders find social, political, and business themes and must navigate expectations and relationships while being true to themselves. That’s an elder challenge. Be appropriate to the situation but without a mask.
 
Elders are succeeding at this challenge because they have deep self-understanding, so their compass of authenticity-true-north always shows them the way. They are not afraid to be themselves but as an elder also know how to be appropriate to the situation. That’s wisdom.
 
In my own experience of becoming an elder, relatedness was most impactful in the metaphysical domain. Metaphysical deals with the fundamental questions about reality, existence and being.
 
Relatedness for me was extremely relevant to the very nature of what it means for me to be human, what it means to grow old, and my interconnectedness to people, circumstances, and the divine.
 
As an elder, a fundamental interconnectedness or unity underlying all existence became real for me. The intellectual concept of the divine shifted to have experiences of spiritual interconnectedness. This didn’t occur just during a 3-day sitting at a meditation, glorious sunsets in Costa Rica, or deep hikes into the Olympic National Park, but now also occurs while waiting in the slow line at the grocery store.
 
Relatedness determines perception. Perception determines reality. The famous wave or particle phenomenon proves that. Change your consciousness, change your relatedness. Change your relatedness, change how you see yourself and everything else. 

That’s the elder's secret sauce. They alter their consciousness, which alters their relatedness, so who they are for themselves and who they are in the world is altered. Altered in a way where their world has greater peace, ease, grace, appreciation, kindness, and humor with what and with whom they relate, including themselves.
 
Poetry has the power to distinguish relatedness in dramatic ways.
 

Irene Sipos
Tired
Sitting across the aisle
on the B train
I look at the row of weary faces
various shapes, sizes, colors, ages,
a horizontal explication of what it means
to have woken many mornings.
to brave routine, to leave concerns at home
along with scattered laundry and unwashed
dishes to head for same/same at work.
I picture each of you, one at a time. I try to
observe without you knowing and suddenly I
see round, soft faces, no creases in foreheads,
no wrinkles like parentheses around eyes, no down-
turned mouths, no slumped shoulders. I see the plump
babies you once were. And with that, a rush of hoping
that you were affectionally held on generous laps, that
you were sung tender songs, that you were offered
a bowl of blueberries as initiation to the messy pleasures
of this world. I hope that occasionally you reach back,
even if only briefly to recall your beginning self as a
visitor new to the planet, unencumbered and dear.
—
Wendell Berry
The Peace
of Wild Things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feed
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.