The Purpose of Longevity

What in the world is life’s new longevity for? Many of us now know someone who is one hundred or more years of age. After spending lovely holidays at the home of Elsie H., age one hundred and one and a half, I ask myself what the new life expectancy can mean for our species.

“We are all los imigrantes, the Soul is The First Immigrant: The Soul cannot be held back by any imaginary boundary drawn against it; not by mountain ranges, not by rivers, nor by human scorn. The Soul, goes everywhere, like an old woman in her right mind, going anywhere she wishes, saying whatever she wants, bending to mend whatever is within her reach.”from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Clarissa Pinkola Estes persuades me that it is for the purpose of an expanded viewpoint—an old woman in her right mind going anywhere she wishes. In other words, longevity brings the long view, another way to speak of the wisdom of Elders, which we need to seek and cherish anew during this crucial time of The Great Turning. I believe is the long view of Elders that can forge for our species a new and resilient image, humans as inter-beings, individual humans as imaginal cells carrying new genetic code into the species being. I consider Barbara Marx Hubbard, from whom I first learned of such cells, to be herself an Elder imaginal cell. Others that come immeditately  to mind include Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Joanna Macy, and– my partner’s dear and stunning Aunt Elsie!

Elsie!

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