Aging in Place

I have been thinking a lot this summer about my health and my future as I age, not because there is any specific health problem.  In fact, if I did not know my chronological age, I probably would rarely think about it, because I feel about the same as I have for years.  But the human world l live in constantly reminds me of my age.

Every one of us has no idea what getting older will actually mean for our individual life on this planet as we get older.  In truth, all of us have no idea about most of what will happen to us in our personal future at any age.  We only have certain expectations based on the information we have been fed by our culture, or ideas we stubbornly hold firmly determined that we can control our own lives and our own aging process through sheer strength of will and proper diet, nutrition, exercise and choice of our environment.

When we are young we make assumptions about our physical and mental well-being based on how we feel at that moment.  But throughout our lives we also get cues from our culture reflecting back at us based on any visible signs of aging.  When we have wrinkles and sagging skin, we are asked questions we never would have been asked even a decade before. We are given the idea that somehow we have out spent our usefulness to those asking the questions even though we are perfectly functional — often more so — than people decades younger.  This lack of belief in our future is a tragedy for a culture badly in need of some elder wisdom and advice.

In reality, getting older is a completely blank slate — as blank as when we were younger and had no idea what would come next either. The difference is no one out there expects anything from us now except for us, at this age, to deteriorate and then die.  So it feels a lot like swimming upstream against the current to continue to be who you have always been.

I am alone on a very large island in the middle of the largest ocean on the planet. This is a great opportunity and absolutely a personal choice for this time in my life. I know I would not have been any more supported by the mainland culture I willingly left behind.

I do not need to aspire to be doing all the types of things I did at 50, or even 60 — I don’t want to.  But I have every right to aspire to do what I think I am capable of accomplishing right now with this body, this mind, and my resilient spirit.

My primary focus now is on my land and the gardens I am creating on my three acres of Hawaiian rainforest.  That work takes up my most productive and happiest days. 

When there is enough time and space I return to writing my “big book” about my philosophy on what gardening teaches.

I hope you all will stay following me on this journey.  It means so much to me that you do.

Here are some pictures of the garden in progress: