Aging As An Unexpected Visitor
Aging is, in many ways, unexpected and unwelcome. It fills us with anxiety and concerns about the unknown. When we begin to hear it knocking on the doors of our lives, we try to bar the door and secure the lock, using whatever means possible to do so. If, instead, we were to follow the counsel of the Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, in his poem, “The Guest House,” we would begin to see aging as another “unexpected visitor,” a “guest [to be treated] honorably.” We would invite aging into the “guest house” of our humanity, get to know it, even in its darkness, and discover that aging may, in fact, be “clearing [us] out for some new delight.”
“The Question(s) of Age: Calling for a New Vision of Spiritual Aging”
By Robert L. Weber, Ph.D. and Carol Orsborn, Ph.D. Aging Today , May, 2013