It’s been nearly eight years since I met my friend, writer Trish McBride. She and I were the only white-haired women attending a 2018 New Zealand shamanic retreat. I remember walking to the top of a hill with her and sitting there mostly in silence.
Trish was the one who clued me onto the book I pulled off the shelf for inspiration this week, Juliet Batten’s Spirited Ageing. Excited about what I might learn, I opened the book and peeked inside. As is true for most of the books I own, I had previously read and underlined significant-to-me parts. Here’s the first underlined sentence:
“The problem with aging is not age, it is petrification, rigidity of soul, inflexibility.”
I wanted to know more about each of those words. Would petrified feel similar to the stiffness I felt after exercise? Was the vow not to buy any books in 2026 damaging to my soul? How flexible could I be if inflexibility was a threat to my well-being?
While mulling over these questions, I noted that the words were not Batten’s words. She was quoting Joan Chittister, another author I’ve admired. A familiar, excited feeling was coursing through my nervous system, telling me that if I purchased the book, I was about to discover a secret. Reminding myself that I wasn’t buying books this year, I reasoned it wouldn’t hurt to look.
I had no trouble finding The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully online. Not only that, but overnight delivery was available! It only took a few moments to convince myself not to be rigid about resolutions.
The book was on my front step the next morning. I opened it and quickly underlined a quote in the Introduction by a French writer, La Rochefoucauld, who said that as we grow older, we become both more foolish and more wise. I admit to feeling a little foolish for making a big fuss over not buying books for a whole year and then breaking the resolution after less than three months.
There is a part of me that truly wanted to go the whole year without buying a single book. This part had been cheering me on and feeling virtuous each time I chose not to buy a book I was excited about. I would feel the initial pain of deprivation, but after that I would feel unburdened somehow about not following my usual habit pattern.
Do you see how one book leads to another? How we become more foolish and wiser at the same time? Are you petrified by aging? These are more of the big questions I’m asking myself this week.
IMAGE: It’s difficult for me to fathom but soon I won’t be able to see these branches so clearly!
