LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Chip Conley!

The joy of becoming an elder

Dear Ones,

Our special guest this week is Chip Conley — who is, among other things, the founder of MEA (formerly Modern Elder Academy), an enterprise that describes itself this way: “We’re on a mission to reframe aging and help people thrive in midlife and beyond.”

YES, PLEASE!

For millennia, human beings have venerated their elders: the wisdom-keepers, the teachers, the mediators, the pillars of community. But contemporary Western culture is youth-obsessed, which is perhaps one of the reasons we are so anxious and confused. Consumer culture makes billions out of our desire to stay young forever, and (insanely!) we now look to the young to create culture for us, to “influence” us, and to give us answers about life. (A favorite meme I saw recently: “Dear God, please give me the confidence of a twenty-year-old life coach.”)

I had the opportunity to teach an MEA workshop last year in the mountains of New Mexico along with my beloved friend (and hero, and Letters From Love alum!) Dr. Tererai Trent. Tererai was born in rural Zimbabwe, in a time and place where elders were still deeply revered. She told us that when she was a child, it was considered an insult to tell a woman that she looked younger than her age. The recipient of such a “compliment” would have been deeply insulted by the comment. How dare you try to remove her years from her — and, by extension, the wisdom and prominence she had acquired over those years? She had EARNED her age — don’t take it from her!

Today, in honor of Chip Conley’s appearance in our newsletter, I thought it would be interesting to ask the spirit of Unconditional Love what it would have us know about becoming elders. For, love it or not, that’s the direction we are all heading in. So we might as well receive some loving guidance about it!

Here we go, dears — can’t wait to read your letters!

Onward,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about becoming an elder?

Dear One, it has already begun. You began to turn into an elder somewhere in that heated vortex of a time between 2016 and 2020. During that brutal chapter of your life — that crucible of change — Rayya got cancer, you got divorced for the second time, Rayya relapsed and then died, you acted out like crazy in your own addictions and compulsions, and then you turned fifty and got sober.

Failure, loss, disappointment, and grief: that’s the stew pot in which wisdom and perspective are cooked up, you little old swamp-witch-in-training, you! That’s how you become someone who actually knows a few things, has endured a few things, has been humbled by many things, is not as afraid of so many things anymore, and can perhaps be of service to others.

Service! That’s what gives you your elder credentials: the wish to serve. Did you even WANT to be of service before just a few years ago? Absolutely no, you did not. You wanted a lot of things: to be free, to soar, to know the wild taste of ecstasy, to be desired, to be original, to be important, to be approved of, to be loved.

But to serve? No. That was not on the menu for you — until you surrendered to life on life’s terms.

Humbled now, you say each day to the God of your understanding, “Use me.” And sometimes — bless your sweet, dear, little aging heart crisscrossed with the scars of existence — sometimes, you actually mean it.

Oh honey, the core of the matter is this: getting old and becoming an elder are not the same thing. If you grow older but no wiser (no more generous or thoughtful or kind or honest than you ever were) then elderhood will elude you. You’ll just turn into a foolish old lady — and foolish old ladies can be fun (we love them!) but there is a higher, deeper calling to the second half of your life, and you know it.

Elders serve, elders teach, elders give.

So! How do we want you to serve, teach, and give?

Well there are some obvious ways, of course — including Letters From Love, sponsoring people in your recovery program, teaching workshops, and giving in the traditional and charitable manners. These are all sacred assignments, but we want you to serve in some less obvious ways as well.

For instance, we have told you already that it is really, really important to us that you don’t do anything anymore to augment your looks or to try to look younger. We are the ones who told you in the last few years to shave your head, to stop wearing makeup, and to stop fighting the sagging and the wrinkles. Let your age show, darling. Be a public example of what it looks like when a woman in your culture walks into her true age with zero resistance.

Zero resistance!

That’s one of our subtler elder assignments for you. This is a service you can offer. (Can offer? Actually, we really insist that you must!) And even though sometimes you look at pictures of yourself these days and wince, and think “just a smidge of Botox would take care of that,” you’ll get over it. We need you to get over it. It’s essential that you get over it. We need you to take all the energy and resources you once sunk into trying to hold onto the appearance of youth and to do literally just about anything else with it. That, too, is an offering. That, too, is a service.

We also need you to keep talking about what it’s like to choose to live in celibacy and singlehood as you get older, as a way of gleaning more joy, freedom, autonomy, celebration, and creativity out of life. Just keep telling the truth about how great it is, and let other women see it, so they can see how scary it isn’t — no matter what the goblins of patriarchal culture try to tell women about the danger and tragedy of a woman getting older on her own.

We want you to keep centering friendship as the most important and under-celebrated kind of love. This, too, is a glorious service. This is your truest expression of love — the extraordinary love and community that you share with the incredible women of your life.

Speaking of celebrating — we want you to keep celebrating, spotlighting, and uplifting the work of Black women writers. This is a joyful elder service.

Have you noticed that all this service is a joy? That it’s fun? It should be. We want you to talk about that, too — about the fun of getting older, and having more to offer. Of becoming more of who you are and less of who you are not — or never should have been.

Another service: we want you to keep practicing not worrying so much. Through meditation, inquiry, and faith, keep learning to love and accept things as they are, and others as they are.

You have been through a lot and you are beginning to notice that things happen, and then things stop happening. You have noticed that most of life and all of death are beyond your control. You have noticed that resistance makes a journey that could be fascinating and gorgeous into a horror movie of panic and wasted efforts at control. You have noticed that you can create more and love more when you are relaxed. You have noticed that hardly anyone is relaxed. Therefore, we ask you to prioritize staying relaxed. Only an elder can be relaxed. Being relaxed is far too impossible an assignment for the young, who feel everything so keenly, so terrifyingly. But you can do it. It’s your time.

You are a young elder still — but you are already an elder. Relax into it. Embrace it. Prioritize it. Fall in love with it. Let your boobs drop, let your hair go white, let your eyes get cloudy. Let things be born and die, including you. Hold your center, hold your peace. Do your service. The second half of your life will be all about what you share and offer in celebration, not what you can GET out of a sense of need. And for that reason, it will be a joy.

Be known to us, and let us be known to you.

We will guide you through it.

We love you, we love you, you little old crusty crone-to-be.

Let’s spread joy.

Prompt

Once again, Lovelets, here we are: a group of nearly 160,000 people from all over the world with all the diversity of backgrounds and experience that implies, and yet . . . we are thinking this week about another subject that is so universally relevant that we can all use the very same prompt, no notes! None of us is getting younger (and I speak for myself when I say: THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT).

So this week, let’s learn about getting older and all that comes along with it with this prompt: Dear Love, what would you have me know about becoming an elder? And remember, if ever you don’t feel like exploring the subject of the week, you can always use this old reliable question: Dear Love, what would you have me know today? It has not failed me yet.