Article August 14, 1995 Issue

Overcoming the "conspiracy" of age

Margaret Coleman Brown Poyser

One of the greatest conspiracies against humanity is the generally accepted belief of growing old. How important it is for us to refuse to let it creep up on us! One might say age is like the fox that creeps into henhouses at night. To remain undetected, the fox slips in under cover of darkness. As the years go by, so might the mesmerizing claims of "old" age slip in. Would not this darkness be mental—ignorance of man's real, immortal selfhood and his God-given dominion?

We've been educated to divide life into stages, each with its constraints: birth, childhood, the teen years, adulthood, old age. It has been said that age is youth rolled up in experience. Neither youth nor age, however, represents man's true being.

We hear it said, "I'm not as young as I used to be," or "I can't seem to do what I used to do." When we hear such things, it's time to sit up, take notice, and ask ourselves, "What can I do about it?" The first thing we can do is to stop questioning our ability to overcome beliefs of decline.

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