I read Jayne Fonda’s autobiography, My life so far, some years ago. Since reading it, I often find myself referring to her book, because, as the Daily Telegraph commented at the time: ‘Once you have read her book, you are unable to get her out of your mind – Jane Fonda is indeed a remarkable woman.’
Having recently listened to one of Jane Fonda’s Ted for Women talks on aging – or rather on ‘rebirth’ – I was once again reminded why I’ve idealised her for so long. It’s down to her refreshing outlook on life, and her view on how to grow old with grace.
There have been many revolutions over the last century but perhaps none as significant as the longevity revolution. We live on average 34 years longer than our great grandparents. Just think about that, it constitutes almost half an additional adult life span. Yet society has not come to terms with this reality and still views aging according to the old paradigm of ‘the Arch’ – we are born, we peak at midlife and then we decline into decrepitude.
Jane Fonda recently launched a new book, Prime Time, which focuses on what she calls the ‘third act’ – the last three decades of the average lifespan. One of the pillars in the book is an analogy in which she compares aging to a staircase - symbolising the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us wisdom, wholeness and authenticity.
Perhaps one should see age not as pathology but rather as potential. It turns out most people over 50 actually feel better, less stressed, less hostile, tending to seek commonalities rather than differences. And if that’s not continued growth and development, what is?
Having entered my own third act, I realised that when you embrace ‘oldness’, instead of seeing it as the enemy, fear subsides. And you realise that you are still yourself, perhaps even more so. As Picasso once said: ‘It takes a long time to become young!’
Of course, aging isn’t always as romantic as all that. A lot has to do with luck and with genes. In fact, one third is genetic and not all of us can win that particular lottery, but it means that there are two-thirds left that we can influence in order to do well in old age.
In her philosophy on aging she refers to the universal law of entropy (the second law of thermo dynamics) – which is the belief that everything in the world is in a constant state of decay (think about the Arch paradigm). Yet, there is one exception to this universal law: the human spirit. The human spirit continues to evolve (if one allows it) into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity, even in the face of – and sometimes because of – extreme physical challenges.
We are all born with spirit, but as we live our lives and learn to use various coping tools to deal with the many challenges we face, our true spirit can become worn down – resulting in many of us feeling ‘unfinished’. So perhaps our third act is the time when we should review our first two acts and work through our memory bank in order to regain the wholeness of our spirit – to finish the task of finishing ourselves, so to speak.
To use a well-worn cliché: For us to know where we are going, we need to know where we’ve been. The key is to find out who we really were back then – not who we’ve become due to our parents expectations, society’s rules or group pressure, but who we really were. Taking the time to do a so-called life review to free ourselves from a past that suppressed our spirit, is crucial.
As Jane so wisely remarks: ‘It is not having experiences that make us wise, it is reflecting on the experiences that we have had that makes us wise and helps us to become whole’.
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