Ageing Gracefully: Avoiding the Grumpy Path

As I approach 80, I hope that I haven't taken the "Grumpy Path". I think I've kept my sense of humour, and I try to flex my mind every day. 

From Aleteia

By Fr Brian Cavanaugh, TOR 

Two options appear as we age. Here are key practices that will keep us on the right path.

There are two paths that quietly appear as the years add their rings to our lives. One slopes downward into complaint, bitterness, and fixation on loss. The other curves toward gratitude, humor, encouragement, and a gentler wisdom of an elder.

Aging itself is neutral; attitude determines whether the years harden the heart or deepen wisdom.

The “grumpy path” begins subtly with physical decline, cultural change, and frustration over a world that no longer feels familiar. When irritation becomes habitual, it slowly stiffens the spirit.

Graceful aging, by contrast, acknowledges loss without allowing it to dominate the story. It asks what gifts still remain and how they might be received with openness.

One voice who named this well was Zig Ziglar. Zig would describe a grumpy mindset as developing what he referred to as psychosclerosis. That is, psyche, “of the mind, soul, or spirit,” plus sclerosis, “as in hardening.”

Psychosclerosis produces a hardening of attitudes that develops into cataracts of the spirit and arthritis of the mind.

Zig would exhort people to frequently get a “checkup from the neck up … to prevent stinking thinking.”

Stretch and flex

So far, there is no cure for arthritis, but there is an effective remedy: stretch and flex. As we must do for the body, so we must also do for the mind and the spirit — stretch and flex.

Otherwise, the heart, mind, and spirit begin to stiffen, then harden, until they become rigid, more like a shell. And that is only a short distance from becoming a tomb for the heart, the mind, and the spirit.

Key practices

Key practices of graceful aging include selective memory that honors the past without using it as a weapon against the present, humor that loosens self-importance, and curiosity that keeps the heart from shrinking.

Above all, graceful elders become people of encouragement. They affirm others, distribute hope, and invest in life beyond themselves.

In the end, aging well is not about appearing younger, but about loving more deeply and choosing gratitude, wonder, and blessing over bitterness and weariness.

Pictured: The Old Curmudgeon, taken in the woods by Clatonia NRD lake, 2 July 2017.