5 Books on Aging Creatively
One of the saddest things about Western society is how we’re taught to be afraid of growing older. The message we hear repeatedly is that after a certain age, nothing but losses, health problems, and frailty wait for all of us. Most books written about aging list ways to either delay or deny the reality of aging or how to manage the medical inevitabilities of living in an older body. Both approaches are based in fear. Neither allows for creative and spiritual growth, and neither speaks to the joys that can be found in the final decades of life.
Our collective fear of aging is ironic given that every one of us, regardless of how much we work out or how well we eat—will face the losses and the joys of aging if we’re privileged to live long enough. Sadly, in a society that denies or morbidly fears getting older, it’s challenging to find roadmaps to an old age that acknowledges loss while still offering hope. This is why I began seeking hopeful yet realistic pictures of aging. These five books not only offer balanced writing about the realities of growing older but also celebrate the creative potential of the final decades of life.
Those of us who have found a home in the creative arts hold an invaluable tool to finding meaning and purpose in the final years of our lives. Creatives never stop creating, even if they become unable to express their creativity the same way they did when they were younger. It’s who we are, and I daresay, it’s who everyone is, even if we don’t identify as artists. As we navigate the terrain of old age with its losses and blessings, we’re offered the most creative task we’re ever given: finding meaning in loss, grace in stillness, and peace in the face of death.
The authors of these five books write from their own experiences. Each one has chosen to approach aging with creative curiosity, and each offers readers pictures, examples, and tools with which to find our own roadmaps to meaning in old age. They’ve helped loosen my own fear of aging, and in their healthy, sometimes humorous advice, I find assurance that my creative spirit will find a home no matter what my circumstances.
Variations on Life After 50: A Field Guide to Harnessing the Power of Creativity, Purpose, and Legacy in Midlife, by Jill Timmons
What it’s about:
Loss is inevitable. How we respond to it is a choice. In this book, author Jill Timmons plunges the reader into the aftermath of life-changing loss. In this disorienting place—one Timmons refers to as ‘liminal’—we’re offered the chance to face midlife and old age not with defeat or bitterness but with the hope and grace that comes from harnessing the power of our creativity.
Why I love it:
This is a book torn straight from real life. In it, pianist and author Jill Timmons draws on music, creativity, philosophy, brain neuroplasticity, psychology, and lived examples as she joyfully offers tips and prompts to help readers harness their own creativity to find meaning and purpose.
Favorite quote:
“While one does not forget loss, it can be artfully woven into the tapestry of life. We can choose expansion over entropy, Creativity over apathy, love of self, other, all. Along the way, you will undoubtedly discover deeper meaning and purpose to your life, one that authentically answers your Soul’s call.”
Shibui: The Japanese Art of Finding Beauty in Aging, by Sanae Ashida
What it’s about:
Essays, watercolor illustrations, practical activities—in this book Japanese-American author Sanae Ishida writes offers beautiful alternatives to Western anti-aging messages. Each chapter celebrates different dimensions of aging, and each contains wisdom and practical advice.
Why I love it:
This is a beautiful book, beautifully written and illustrated. In it, Ashida offers ideas and thoughts, not prescriptions. It’s a reminder of all the ways aging beautifies and refines us rather than erases us.
Favorite quote:
“As we grow older, we can find beauty and meaning in everyday…duties. Tiny, seemingly insignificant actions practiced over time are worthwhile in and of itself. It’s a gentle reminder that purpose isn’t always about achieving great feats…but about doing small things with deliberate, intentional, unconditional love.”
Making the Best of What’s Left, by Judith Viorst
What it’s about:
In the latest of bestselling author Judith Viorst’s books celebrating the decades of her life, Making the Best of What’s Left speaks to the joys and sorrows of life’s twilight years. This book, written while in her nineties, blends her signature humor, poignancy, vulnerability, wisdom, and happiness as she writes about aging, death, and deciding if one is too old to get the chairs recovered.
Why I love it:
She’s funny. And heartbreaking. And always, always real. She draws examples from her own life and the lives of her friends. She ponders the idea of an afterlife while mourning her husband and looking back on her own life. And in the midst of everything, her writing shimmers with the joys that are still to be found—even in the final years of life.
Favorite quote:
“So having made whatever practical plans can be made for the future, I am, perhaps for the first time in my life, living life to the fullest—right now."
The Wonder of Aging: A New Approach to Embracing Life After Fifty, by Michael Gurian
What it’s about:
In this positive and encouraging book, Michael Gurian divides life after fifty into age-related stages, offering real life examples, life tasks, and ideas for living each stage holistically and healthfully. Throughout, he celebrates all the ways each stage of life can bring us creative, emotional, and spiritual growth.
Why I love it:
In a world that lumps everyone over age 55 into the same category, this book is a refreshing reminder that even within the decades society deems senior, we have opportunities to complete age-appropriate life tasks and to open our hearts to fuller living and loving.
Favorite quote:
“It is time now to become the people you hoped for many decades to become, the ones who carry the universe like a masterpiece in your small hands.”
Old Age: Journey into Simplicity, by Helen M. Luke
What it’s about:
This classic text on aging wisely, written by renowned Jungian analyst Helen M. Luke, examines final journeys as depicted in Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Kind Lear, and T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. With special attention paid to the reality of suffering, she writes of the difference between growing old and giving up, and encourages readers to continue to grow emotionally and mentally during the final stage of life.
Why I love it:
Rather than offering platitudes and easy answers, Helen M, Luke’s compassionate and beautiful writing and psychological insight offers light and hope in the darkest suffering and mortality.
Favorite quote:
“Now that the harvest is gathered and you stand in the autumn of your life, your oar is no longer a driving force carrying you over the oceans of your inner and outer worlds, but a spirit of discriminating wisdom, separating moment by moment the wheat of life from the chaff, so that you may know in both wheat and chaff their meaning and their value in the pattern of the universe.”
Photo by Tiago Muraro, courtesy of UpSplash