Aging with Meaning

Aging can be a terrible or a liberating thing, or both depending on how you handle it. It can make you mad, literally. Nobody likes to grow old. The normal presumption is the older you get, the nearer you are to death. And nobody likes to die; it's the ultimate of your life being reduced to nothing, particularly if you don't believe in God or the hereafter.

The human natural instinct objects to aging. That's why advertisements pandering to miraculous creams and elixirs of health abound, selling us the vain hope that somehow the process can be arrested or at least camouflaged. Hovering over all this ado about aging is that unwelcome stranger - death, an ever-present shadow, a robber lurking around waiting to snatch life away. Once it strikes, it's as if that life never existed for after the tears subside, the grief is buried or burnt up with a mere shell of a body, and the world moves on.

That was what stuck in my head as I watched a very angry drug-depressed daughter rant at an aging father who had achieved so much success as Birdman the screen superhero, yet failed her all his life. A washed-up actor trying to rejuvenate his career and repair broken relationships in the process battling an existential crisis within himself. Here is a Hollywood has-been struggling to find meaning in his life,his work and his connection with others. 

It's the story of every man, every woman. Surely we all want our lives to mean something, to feel 'relevant', to be 'validated and respected', to do something that's 'important' to us; whatever that may be. But the hard-hitting truth of life on this earth is, as the rebellious daughter puts it bluntly, is that the world forgets all too easily and all too quickly, so "You're the one who doesn't exist. You're doing this because you're scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don't matter and, you know what, you're right. You don't! It's not important, okay? You're not important! Get used to it."

Could that be the reason we obsess about opening our e-mails first thing in the morning, fiddle with our smart phones at the dinner table, count the 'likes' on our Fb page, or how many followers we have on Twitter or how many people are logging into our blogs? How pathetically sad that a human being's importance, relevance and significance should be reduced to such petty measurements.  Birdman very poignantly echoes that inner voice of every human being : What am I all about?  In a world where everything and everyone is so 'connected', there are even more lonely souls than ever. It takes a homeless man on the street to quote the immortalized words of Shakespeare's Macbeth to put this earthly life into reality, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out! Out! Brief candle, Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing" Nothing. How depressing indeed if such is the sum total and end of our humanity.

Yet if you believe there is something more than just life on earth , then there is redemption - there is something called hope. That's where Birdman literally soars. Is it all just fanciful imagination that he can fly in the sky, like when he did on a movie set? All the super-power levitating and telekinesis, is it for real? Or is he mentally so deranged that he has totally 'lost' it? Bad enough he hears his alter-ego's voice , but he actually sees Birdman - a guy in a bird suit -  sitting on his toilet-bowl. That's insane. But this wasn't just a story of a depressed character driven by his own inner demons to suicide. There are so many rich nuances played out by and in each of the characters to appreciate, but to a die-hard romantic like me, the best moment of the dark movie was when father and daughter were reconciled. She, the wild rebel, bringing lilacs to his hospital bed, because he has shot off his own nose on the opening night of his play after the humiliation of  running through the city streets in his underwear. She just lays down her head to rest on his chest.

It spoke volumes about love and forgiveness although not one word was exchanged. Nothing and yet everything was said in that simple gesture. Ironically his play that was supposed to catapult him back into fame was entitled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Ultimately love and forgiveness brings down all barriers; heals and frees us to be all that we can be and are meant to be. To the extent that death no longer has any power over us. At least that's how I like to interpret that most cryptic ending; when moments later, she goes off to get a vase for the flowers and returns to find her father missing with the window open, automatically we assume the worst - that he jumped. But if so, why is she smiling as she looks down over the high ledge and then up into the sky, where the birds are flying? Did he or didn't he... die? It really doesn't matter. He is free, he knows the meaning of his life is not dependent on an ascerbic critic's approval of his work, or anyone else for that matter. He found his peace, when he dared surrender and let something bigger than himself take over. That's true freedom.

I guess that's how it is with God.  He isn't Birdman, He isn't anyone's alter-ego, or a voice in someone's head. But His love and forgiveness gives me a meaning in life bigger than myself.  When I surender to Him, He enables me to soar  on His wings; that takes me beyond aging, beyond death, to find  life that's everlasting. So aging and death cannot turn me into nothing.


"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life" - John 5:24