c. 2000 Religion News Service
(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)
ROTA, Spain _ Except for graffiti announcing a sighting of “El Zorro,” the sights on display during this morning’s walk along the beach in Andalusia are the human form in its infinite variety.
Morning, it seems, is when older adults and families with young children make their primordial return to the sea. Later in the day, teen-agers and young adults will appear, and heads will turn.
No heads are turning now, as 5-year-olds strip for a swim and older adults parade in minimalist attire that modesty of a more self-conscious nature would discourage.
“Go for it!” I say to myself, as elderly men walk shirtless along the beach, not worried, it seems, by revealing how far years and genes have taken them. Don’t be intimidated by our thin-is-good culture, or by the motto once espoused by writer F. Scott Fitzgerald when he was 25 and a success, before Zelda and alcohol destroyed his creativity and reduced him to writing screenplays for Ginger Rogers: Youth is beauty, and beauty is youth.
I am aware, of course, that my own lithe days are past. Middle age seems to be that season when one is just a diet away from regaining the form of youth, but one also gauges the likelihood that sag will prevail and discovers that sag isn’t such a big deal after all.
Middle age is an odd season, both traumatic and peaceful at the same time. Back home, where everything is commerce and career, middle age seems defined by one’s remaining chances to attain wealth and security. But here in Spain, where business takes me, money and career seem to matter less and security comes from family, not a 401(k). The physical reality underlying age is manifest.
We start firm and grow soft. We start thin and, except for a few, grow not-thin. We can dye our hair, wear caps to cover bald spots and choose our clothing carefully, but in the end, artifice must give way to acceptance.
Acceptance is paramount. One simply is, and each season has its unique joys and sorrows. The beach doesn’t care how we look.
And yet many buy Fitzgerald’s mantra, even though it served him poorly. They lament the passing of youth, as if young and thin were all that mattered, as if expanding girth were a betrayal. Entire industries play to the bluster: “I will not look old! I will not look old!”
How sad. How much like what Jesus encountered in Nazareth, when he tried to proclaim the Gospel to his townsfolk but encountered a stone wall of “unbelief.”
A critical moment in life comes when one realizes: I cannot save myself. I cannot assert my youth, my beauty, my boundless energy against the world and thereby make sense of life. I cannot acquire enough toys to make the morning worth greeting. I cannot climb the career ladder far enough to escape the demons in myself. I cannot chase eternal youth as if a thin body and clear skin stopped time from advancing and ultimate accountability from occurring.
Then comes the realization that there has to be a savior outside oneself, a force not just powerful, but kind, merciful and compassionate, who paints the dawn no matter how meagerly we ended yesterday, who loves our souls no matter how rebellious our flesh, who sees time not as sand running out but as a fulfillment to be embraced.
Jesus tried to tell his childhood friends of such a God, to set them free from the panic of self-salvation. But they were stuck in that unbelief that sees no limit to one’s self-generated opportunities.
That, at least, is how I imagine their unbelief, perhaps because, when I see unbelief in my own world, it usually takes that form, namely, a belief in self.
The trauma of aging isn’t loss of sex appeal, for one does eventually learn that there is more to life than sex. The trauma, I think, is the discovery that one isn’t in control, that forces are at work in life which one would never have chosen to allow, and that no amount of hard work or dieting will prevail against reality.
DEA END EHRICH
