Elderhood and the Golden Brain Shift

Last week's blog introduced my version of the Golden Years, Golden Brain. This "Golden Brain" has an uncanny and brilliant way of identifying the crucial aspects of life, the deeper elements that most of us don't contemplate in our early years. My brain has changed as I've eased into my 70s, and I'm learning what an aching body feels like. In truth, there is nothing idyllic about the golden years, which I will refer to from now on as elderhood and the golden brain in my experience yet.

Have we romanticized our elder years as some sort of life pinnacle? We reach this high point and then descend to enjoy the ravages old age brings us? I must admit to being stubborn about declining or descending into anything, especially if it involves more pain.

Back to the Golden Brain. Lest you think I'm seeing a golden glow around my brain, here's an example of how it functions differently. Today, my alarm rang at 6:30am. I'm attempting to return to my usual 5:30am writing time, but I shut it off and lazed in bed enjoying the quiet and calm. I went through my mental checklist of the changes in today's schedule: out the door around 8:45 instead of 8:30am. Rearrange, clean and organize the last cupboard in my kitchen and finish washing the dishes left from supper.

My mind wandered to my book and the fact that I was supposed to return to it this week. There were a few chapters that needed rearranging. Monday. I'll start fresh. Sighing, I got up, dressed, slathered my face in sunscreen, brushed my teeth and put my walking runners on. I made coffee for my partner and was enjoying morning banter when there was a knock at the door. Hellooo, ready to get your feet done? said the voice at the door. Startled, I jumped up and greeted our foot care specialist. Oh no, I was going to text you about when your next visit was, and I completely forgot. No worries, come on in. Then, oh no, I didn't put his foot cream on as I lunged for the special cream that dulled his sensitive toes as the nurse got ready to trim his hardened toenails.

I'll go out to the bank to get your payment. Be back in 20 minutes. And out the door I went. This brain is not so golden, is it! Our family shares one car, so I typically drop off my son at work and then continue on to do my walk. On the way to my son's work, he said, The car goes into servicing this morning, right? Oh nooo, I forgot about that, too. Where is my brain?!

Indeed, where was it? I had to conclude I overloaded it with projects: cleaning, finishing my book, medical tasks, and organizing my house for the fall. That's not what caused my brain to wipe out the day's schedule; it was worry. Worry is the destroyer of rational thought and memory. I took a few deep breaths and took a small break before I walked the 45 minutes home after dropping off the car for servicing. That's just like my brain. It needs occasional servicing too, golden or not.

At a local coffee shop, I sat for about 20 minutes drinking coffee and eating a small breakfast before I resumed my walk home. Awww, that felt so good. Besides, I'd forgotten to charge my phone this morning and was just about out of juice. Figures...

What I just described are the memory lapses I typically hear about from other elder people, but is there another type of brain function we don't talk about so much like my 76-year-old partner's amazing recall of trivia despite a stroke that almost killed him. History is another area elders know because they lived through it. I saw the assassination of John Kennedy live on TV in 1963, and the Beatles' first live performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. The video of the first steps on the moon captivated me when it happened in 1969.

One advantage of elderhood is that we've gone through all that life threw at us and lived to tell the tale. Experience is knowledge we have lived, and it brings wisdom. I turned to an author who is inspiring me as I grow older. Bill Plotkin discusses the eight phases of life and his Soulcentric Developmental Wheel.1 The Grove stage is Early Elderhood, or Stage 7, which he calls The Master in the Grove of Elders. Here is his description:

The Grove stage is characterized by a gradual shift from doing to being, from the honing of skill to the development of a centered nonstriving. Previously, life had been defined by personal initiative and an energetic promotion of the ego’s agenda — whether that ego was a child’s, adolescent’s, or soul-rooted adult’s. Now, for the Master, the challenge and opportunity is to get out of the way of the magic, to surrender to the way in which life — the Mystery, or the Tao — wants to manifest through the individuated self. The Master learns to release her personal ownership of her soulwork.2

Far from the descent of a retiring worker, and my focus on how my golden brain is or isn't working the way I want it to, elderhood is where I aspire to be–in that being and non-striving place, surrendering to the way in which life wants to manifest through the self. The Elderhood and Golden Brain shift IS from doing to being. This is not an idyllic place; it is a powerful space where the self gets "out of the way of the magic".

1. Plotkin, Bill, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, (California: New World Library, 2008), 60. Kindle Edition.

2. Plotkin, Bill, Nature and the Human Soul, 391