Prime Time - Jane Fonda [8]
Every other single thing in the world operates on the principle of entropy; in fact, the second law of thermodynamics says that everything is in a continual state of decline and decay (think of Arnheim’s arch). The one thing that defies this universal law is the human spirit (Arnheim’s stairway). This alone continues to evolve upward. And, like energy—which it is—spirit can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed (the first law of thermodynamics!).
The philosopher, poet, and novelist George Santayana wrote, “Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age.… Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.”
We’re all born with spirit, but for some of us it is buried deep beneath the detritus of life—violence, abuse, neglect, disease, chronic depression. That’s when addictions can happen. We become “empty chalices,” in the words of the psychologist Marion Woodman, and so we try to fill ourselves with clutter, including addictions. Psychiatrists call this “self-medicating.” For example, alcoholics try to replace spirit with spirits … alcohol. There are many other ways in which people in whom spirit is damped down seek to fill themselves: compulsive shopping, gambling, violence, workaholism, sex, drugs, food, drama. One of the great ideas of Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve-step program is that we can’t be fully healed until we’ve opened ourselves to our spirit or “Higher Power.”
It took me a long time to get this. The whole “Higher Power” business used to feel so touchy-feely to me. Now that I have experienced it myself—overcoming a long-standing food addiction—I understand that it has more to do with love than it does with God (unless you understand these two as one). The humility needed to take the step of acceptance and love softens the hard, empty place at our center, permitting spirit to flood in and fill the emptiness.
A wise person—I don’t remember who—once said, “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” It takes work and intentionality to continue to grow, to ascend that staircase. In Beowulf, this is described as having “wintered into wisdom.” Wisdom is there in all of us; we just have to bring it out and fluff it up. But if we don’t address our addictions, our stagnation, or our old attitudes, or if our life goal is centered on continuing the past, remaining powerful or good-looking in the mechanistic sense, then age is a downward and very slippery slope. Eventually someone smarter and quicker supplants us at the top, the golf swing gets iffy, the old rituals become empty. While surgery can tighten the face, there’s still the giveaway neck and arms, the tendency toward postmenopausal thickening around the middle.
If, however, our goal is to awaken to a new stage, to awaken our consciousness, harvest our wisdom, burnish our perhaps languishing soul so as to go deeper into life’s meaning and manifest it with compassion, then age can be a positive process of continued development and growth, moving us toward our goals instead of causing us to leave our goals behind.
Plastic Surgery
I have not hidden the fact that I have succumbed to wanting to look good in the mechanistic sense. Yes, at seventy-two I had plastic surgery on my jawline and under my eyes.
From early girlhood, starting with my father, I was judged by how my face and body looked. This became what I thought determined whether I would be loved. I’ve tempered my anxiety around these surface issues, but I cannot deny that they still lurk. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if those things hadn’t mattered as much. Would I have accomplished less because of being less driven to prove myself? I certainly would have had a lot more time to do character-enhancing things