The Fifth Chapter of Life

(Republished from The Fifth Chapter Blog, original date 7/11/11)

Indeed, while we do not tend to associate our second childhood to such an early age these days, many begin to experience the higher element of “spirit self”. As we age, we can experience a greater awakening of spirit and freedom as we begin to let go of the dross while we allow ourselves to let go of some of our possible selves. Laura A. King and Joshua A. Hicks have written about this phenomena of aging in Whatever Happened to What Might Have Been in an October 2007 article published in American Psychologist. Still, in my study of various attempts to categorize Old Age, it is not obvious when the aging adult’s feisty lack of concern about appearances and other people’s opinions can be seen to have turned from a healthy acceptance of limits into an unhealthy stubborn need to hang on when independence is no longer helpful.

So to help sort out the distinction, I have come to think of this stage as the 5th Chapter. This is mostly due to the widely acclaimed book by Gail Sheehy, Passages. Ms. Sheehy admirably calls attention to four stages of adulthood – predictable crisis points – which had not been adequately covered in developmental psychology. Even so, in this book, it is almost as if menopause ends the adult life passage. There is no fifth stage or chapter to cover how to handle the ultimate adult crisis, the decline of adult functions, hence, the 5th Chapter.

But here is the problem. There is no certain cut off age. There is no specific time when we will know we need to hand over the car keys or ask others to pay our bills. It slips up on us. For some, this loss of independence comes over them all at once through a major health crisis. For others, the loss of independence and ability to care for Self, creeps in quietly, slowly and almost imperceptibly.

Yet, there are more people hitting 100 years of age these days. According to the U.S. census the number of people turning 100 in 1990 was 37,000. Ten years later this number had come close to doubling as 72,000 people turned 100 in the 2000 census. There are aging heroes, like Frances Perenon of Oakland. She was on the pitcher’s mound on June 18th to throw out the first pitch of the Oakland A’s game in honor of her 100th birthday. See the article by Suzanne Bohan, published on June 27, 2011, in the Contra Costa Times, www.contracostatimes.com. What do you want to be doing for you 100th birthday?