Sri Ramakrishna Math : The Vedanta Kesari, Fear of Old Age

Swami Adiswarananda, the Minister-in-charge of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Centre, New York, USA, is a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He is a well-known thinker and contriubutes articles to various journals.

The saint-poet Bhartrihari describes old age in the following words:

Pleasure has no longer any attraction for us; the world no longer respects us: our contemporaries have died away one by one; the friends whom we love as we love ourselves will shortly follow: we hobble along leaning on a stick, and our eyes gradually become dim. Alas! these are signs that our body has been subdued, and that it is trembling at the approach of death... My face is wrinkled and my hair turning grey; my limbs are weak, and only desire is strong within me.¹

In the teachings of Buddha, old age is one of the woes of life. According to Vedanta, old age is one of the six inescapable realities of life. Old age is the price we have to pay for our physical embodiment.

Such description is no exaggeration of a pessimist or a life-denying ascetic. The harsh reality of old age cannot be rationalized or ignored in any way. Old age follows the law of biology: that which is born will one day decline and die. None can escape this inexorable law. The weakening of the body, failing memory, slow withdrawal of life, a sense of restriction, a form of diminution of personality, and fear of losing life's meaning, make old age unbearable. People who have always been very socially oriented and outgoing suddenly wake up one day in old age to discover their diminished social usefulness. Their children do not need them so much any more. The younger generations do not covet their company. Every now and then they are reminded that they are old-fashioned and out of touch with the times. They begin to feel fear: fear of being unwanted and unloved, fear of being ill and dependent, and fear of being a burden and a botheration to others.

It may be that there are elderly achievers who continue to be brilliant, active, and innovative and who move with confident strides. But they are exceptions to the general rule. For the vast majority, old age is a downward slope marked by steady physical and mental decline. As old age sets in, people begin to lose ambition and enthusiasm. They begin losing friends to death or distance or neglect.

People in old age tend to look backward and never fail to repeat the words 'the good old days', as if everything was good in the past. They often invoke their age to justify their so-called wisdom about anything. Because of the weakening of the control mechanisms of the mind, their faults, well disguised in earlier years, become increasingly evident. Their unfulfilled desires make them jealous of young people who strive and fight for recognition, success, and pleasure. For them, the young indulge in wild dreams and are too immature and too impatient to understand the meaning of life. They look upon anything new, however remarkable, with suspicion. Most often they live in the world of their old memories and the concrete world of the present appears foreign to them.

Even though we all know that old age is inescapable yet we refuse to accept it. We do not want to think of it. We try to forget it or ignore it. We resort to cliches and illusions to escape it. Our industrial age has created and promoted a youth culture that denies old age. In olden times, life was divided into four stages--childhood, youth, middle age, and old age; but our modern culture has downsized the categories to three--childhood, youth, and 'you are looking fine.' Coffeehouses put up signs saying, 'Don't blame our coffee. You too will one day be old and moldy.' Psychologists teach us to deny old age, saying: 'Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it does not matter.' Old people never call themselves old. A person who is 80 years old says 'I am 80 years young.' Expressing disgust and dislike of old age, talk-show hosts have coined phrases, such as the 'Four Bs of old age: bunions, bulges, bifocals, and baldness.' Promoters of youth culture have invented terms like senior citizen and citizen of longer living to identify the old. For them, an old person is not old but biologically challenged; and a dead person is never dead but metabolically challenged. Yet old age refuses to reverse its course. Saying that 'old age is gracious,' or 'it is the greatest time to be old,' or 'old age is the best time of life-- the golden years' does not make old age different.

We are constantly searching for a magic cure for the malady of old age. Haunted by the specter of old age, millions are taking recourse to drug therapy, diet therapy, gene therapy, various physical exercises, stress management, hair colouring, hair implantation, and a hundred other ways to maintain their youthful appearance. Billions of dollars are being spent by the cosmetics industry in search of products and ways to hide at least the outward signs of aging. The vast dependence on plastic surgery in the United States to hide the signs of aging is the sharpest index of our anxiety. According to Jere Daniel, the author of an article entitled 'Society Fears Aging' in the book An Aging Population, 'In just two decades, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the number of wrinkle-removing face-lifts rose from 60,000 to an estimated 2 million a year at an annual cost of $ 10 billion.'² But all our efforts to stop the advance of old age by material and psychological means prove futile. Eventually the lifted face falls again, implanted hairs do not grow, stress becomes unmanageable, the body refuses to exercise, drug therapy fails, and cosmetic make-up cannot hide any more the signs of old age. At last old age finds us out and catches hold of us. We grudgingly accept the inevitable. We moan, cry, and curse our fate. We never stop to think that having a longer old age is not living longer. It is dying longer.

An article by Nancy J. Osgood entitled 'Society Does Not Respect the Elderly' in the book An Aging Population states:

The glorification of youth and development of the youth cult in America began in the nineteenth century and grew rapidly in the twentieth, and it now flourishes in our present atmosphere of narcissism. Youth is associated with vitality, activity, and freshness. To be young is to be fully alive, exciting, attractive, healthy, and vigorous. Old age, on the other hand, is associated with decline, disease, disability, and death rather than wisdom, inner peace, and other positive qualities.

Psychological factors influence ageism in our culture. The youth cult grows out of a profound fear of growing old. Through the ages, few fears have cut as deeply into the human soul as the fear of aging. Americans especially have a stark terror of growing old. Old age is associated with loss of independence, physical disease, mental decline, loss of youthful vitality and beauty, and finally death, and old people are reminders of our own mortality. Because many people have limited contact with healthy, vibrant old people and lack accurate knowledge about the aging process, their fear escalates.

Ageism is manifested through stereotypes and myths about old people and aging. In medical circles older patients are stereotyped as 'crocks' or 'vegetables'. Other common terms for older people are old fuddy dutty, little old lady, and dirty old man. Old people are thought of as being fit for little else but sitting idly in a rocking chair. Older women are referred to as old witch, old bag, and old biddy. Old men are stereotyped as old geezers, old goats, and old codgers. Common stereotypes of aging view the old as out to pasture, over the hill, and all washed up.

In American culture several mechanisms perpetuate and communicate ageist images, stereotypes, and myths: common aphorisms, literature, the media, and humour. Aphorisms about aging and older people permeate American culture. Some of the most common include: 'You can't trust anyone over forty'; 'You're only as old as you feel'; and 'Age before beauty.' These common sayings convey the idea that age is something to be denied or feared and allude to imagined losses accompanying the aging process.

The Western heritage in literature is replete with negative images of old age, beginning with the medieval works. The foolish lust of older women is described in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio. The physical ugliness and disgusting behaviour of the old were frequently highlighted in fairy tales such as 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Snow White,' where old women are portrayed as wicked witches. The emptiness of old age is a major theme in American literature. In the poem 'Gerontion,' T.S. Eliot provides a description of the empty misery of an old man: 'a dry brain in a dry season.' In his works Eliot describes old age as an empty wasteland. In every culture humour conveys attitudes about the aged. In our own society these attitudes are expressed through jokes, cartoons, comic strips, and birthday cards.'³

There is widespread thinking that perhaps old people can be dispensed with. Dumping an old grandfather in a park because he has Alzheimer's disease has already become news. Taking care of the old is increasingly becoming a threat to the younger generation. In our present-day society, where money is the measure of everything, the elderly are looked upon as an economic liability and a social burden.

The prospect of loneliness often accompanies the process of aging. In fact, many old people, unable to bear this loneliness, commit suicide, and many are clamouring for the right to die rather than be forced to live with the indignities and hopelessness of old age. Aging also hardens the likes and dislikes of a person--his or her prejudices, perceptions, and value judgments that refuse to acknowledge the reality of aging. Many people get extremely panicky when they become old. In their earlier years, they never stopped to think of this inevitability and now they are emotionally ill prepared to accept the fact. They become fearful and depressed. Old age has become a widespread social problem in our time. Improvement in diet, technology, and medicine has increased the longevity of a person. People are living much longer than ever before. 'The Census Bureau anticipates that sixty-two million people, or almost one in five Americans, will be aged 65 and older by 2025,'⁴ and that number will continue to rise as the years go by. Leaders and thinkers are struggling to find a solution for the problem of old age.

There are some in the United States who are advocating the idea that there is a duty for the elderly to die, saying: 'It is a moral responsibility to make room for the young. As leaves fall from the trees in the fall, so old people have a duty to die... To have reached the age of, say, 75 or 80 years without being ready to die is itself a moral failing, the sign of a life out of touch with life's basic realities.'⁵ The author John Hardwig, in his article, 'Is There a Duty to Die?' advocates 'that there already is a legal right to refuse life-prolonging medical treatment' and claims that 'a duty to die can go well beyond that... There may be a fairly common responsibility to end one's life in the absence of any terminal illness.' Indeed, 'there can be a duty to die even when one would prefer to live.'⁶

In a book chapter entitled 'Rational Suicide Among the Elderly,' Derek Humphry contends that old age is 'sufficient cause to give up' even without unbearable suffering. He sees suicide as a 'pre-emptive alternative to growing old.' Mary Barrington, past president of the London-based Voluntary Euthanasia Society, in her 'Apologia for Suicide' argues that a disabled older individual in poor health and in need of constant care and attention may feel a burden to the younger person(s) who must provide that care. This situation may be such that the young person is in 'bondage' whether willingly or unwillingly. The old person may want to 'release' the young person but has no real choice but to continue to live on. There is a strong implication in her writing that the older person who is a burden to the younger people should (has an obligation to) release younger family members from the burden of caring for her by opting for suicide. Stating the same position in even stronger terms, Dr. Glanville Williams argues for the elimination of 'the senile' elderly. He writes: 'A decision concerning the senile may have to be taken within the next twenty years. The number of old people are (sic) increasing by leaps and bounds. Pneumonia, 'the old man's friend,' is now checked by antibiotics. The effects of hardship, exposure, starvation and accident are now minimized. Where is this leading us?... What of the drooling, helpless, disoriented old man or the doubly incontinent old woman lying loglike in bed? Is it here that the real need for euthanasia exists?' As the aging population continues to expand rapidly and we as a nation continue to spend more dollars on health care costs and advanced medical technology, which are disproportionately utilized by older persons, the need for budget cutting, health care rationing and redistribution of health and other resources becomes more pressing. Older adults are viewed as an emotional and financial burden to be borne by the younger members of society. Cries for rational suicide, the right to die, and legalized assisted suicide grow louder. It seems easier to eliminate the problem of too many expensive old people to care for, or to encourage the problem to eliminate itself through sanctions encouraging suicide, rather than to face hard moral choices about our financial spending as individuals and as a society and our appropriate obligations to our older members, who have created and improved the society we now live in.⁷

1. The Satakas or Wise Sayings of Bhartrihari, II, Verses 9 and 14. Translated by J.M.Kennedy. T.Werner Laurie Ltd., London (no year given in book), pp. 93 and 95.
2. 'Society Fears Aging', by Jere Daniel in An Aging Population: Opposing Viewpoints. David Bender and Bruno Leone, Series Editors, Charles P.Cozic, Book Editor. Greenhaven Press, Inc., San Diego, California, 1996, pp. 167-168. 3. 'Society Does Not Respect the Elderly', by Nancy J.Osgood in An Aging Population: Opposing Viewpoints. David Bender and Bruno Leone, Series Editors, Charles P.Cozic, Book Editor. Greenhaven Press, Inc., San Diego, California, 1996, pp. 177-178.
4. 'An Aging Population May Not be Harmful to America', by Charles F.Longino, Jr., in An Aging Population: Opposing Viewpoints. David Bender and Bruno Leone, Series Editors, Charles P.Cozic, Book Editor. Greenhaven Press, Inc., San Diego, California, 1996, pp. 26-27.
5. 'A Duty to Die', by Nat Hentoff, in Liberal Opinion Week, Vol.8, No.24, June 16, 1997, p.5.
6. Ibid., p.5.
7. An Aging Population: Opposing Viewpoints, pp.179-180.