At some point your expiration date will be a matter to consider. You slow down, your body is less compliant and everything takes more effort and energy. The acceptance of this inevitability is the final developmental task after Midlife and Elderhood. It is part of the ultimate disengaging and letting go of life as you have known it and accommodating to the challenging realities Life inevitably brings our way.
Since not everyone enjoys the gift of long life with the time and wisdom to sense the shifting patterns, not everyone gets to play this particular end game. You are fortunate, despite the increasing physical challenges and the growing psychological fatigue, because you have also gained increased wisdom and a depth of spirit not available earlier in your life.
You are better able to face your demise with agency and awareness as a result of all the psychological effort in coming to terms with Midlife and beyond. The degree to which you can learn to let go of a compulsion to achieve and accomplish in the external world determines the ease with which you are able to navigate this final phase with grit, grace and equanimity. For all we know, perhaps what awaits us after what we call death is nothing to fear. Rather, quite the opposite – a better context for growing and developing than we have known in this lifetime.
Consider the analogy of a fetus that becomes an embryo and then a full-term baby finally facing what lies beyond the womb with fear. The loss of the familiar: the food supply, the tactile support of the mother’s body, the sense of containment and safety all elicit fear and anxiety of the unknown. Imagine being thrust out of the known “safe” place which is all the life that is about to emerge has known into a strange new scary world. What the baby does not know is that this place is no longer safe. In fact, the baby could not survive without emerging at some point in time and learning to breathe on its own. Staying in the womb results in suffocation and the expulsion, the transition of birth that is filled with dread, is actually the process that saves the baby’s life.
Only by leaving all that is known and familiar can the baby survive and grow. Being expelled by an unrelenting force though felt as an ultimate death is what actually preserves life. Can you imagine that your soul’s experience on the other side of death could be a blessing and a delight? And isn’t that what those who have had a near-death experience report when they return to life?
So what is there to fear as we experience the transition from this dimension to the next? It may be our ultimate blessing and the beginning of a new way of being we would never want to miss experiencing and the new level of consciousness and connection which has previously been beyond our kin might just be the life we had always longed for.
-Shulamit Sofia
Shulamit Sofia MSW, is a Modern Elder, trained in psychology, clinical social work, human development and community consultation who has dedicated her life to helping others maximize their life experience. With the wisdom of longevity, she serves as a guide through the undiscovered opportunities and adventures of later life. As author of “Climbing the Sacred Ladder” and “From Oy to Joy,” she offers a GPS for dealing with the adventures and difficulties that come with the Aging process. Available for individual consultation.