Ageism - A Birthday Reflection

There is nothing like a birthday to wake me up to the reality that time is marching on.  Marking time’s  passage is an occasion for celebration of  life as family and friends gather to witness the blowing out of candles and the eating of cake.  To have survived another year, to have experienced the ups and hopefully  fewer downs, is indeed a cause for joy.  We celebrate aging but not the aged.  As a society, how do we reconcile the dichotomy?   After all, to age is to survive.  Surely that is the hope we have as we witness the fragility of  life around us.  Natural disasters, senseless killing, accidents…others have left and we  are here, we have figuratively and literally “dodged another bullet”.   What is our purpose?  Is it merely to survive to blow out the candles and eat the cake?  Viktor E. Frankl is the author of a book that  literally changed my life decades ago.  I am grateful not only for his survival but for his ability to put into words and actions a philosophy for life and living.  I would like on this, the occasion of my birthday, to  reflect in future blogs on his book,  “Man’s Search For Meaning”.  It is based not only on his physical survival but the growth of his spirit while in a concentration camp during  WWII.  Frankl’s survival is a testimony to the reason we blow out the candles and eat the cake.  It is to celebrate not just the aging of the body, the physical testimony to longevity…it is to celebrate the growth and blooming of the Spirit of man which never dies but continues to rejuvenate through the passage of years.   Its  message is to look beyond the physical and celebrate the Spirit within…let us light the candles that never go out and eat the cake of wisdom.  Dr. Frankl wrote his book in 1945 in 9 successive days and he wrote it as he states:   “to prove that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones”.  I hope you will read and comment on the upcoming blogs. 

​Happy 4th of July/Independence Day!