Donald Hall: The Fresh Air Interview and “Affrimation”

              Poet laureate, Donald Hall, discussed his experience of aging in an interview with Terry Gross on her radio program, Fresh Air.  Much of what he observed about his experience mirrors the social critique of Erik Erikson in laying out his ninth stage of psychosocial development.  Erikson notes, amongst other things, that our society lacks a place and function for the elderly.  This narrow view of potential and social role that Erikson refers to also impacts how we, as individuals and as a society, perceive our entire lifespan.  “Lacking a culturally viable ideal of old age, our civilization does not really harbor a concept of the whole of life” (Erikson, 1997).  Similarly, Donald Hall observed that, “old people are a separate form of life. ... They can be pleasant, they can be annoying… but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. ... People's response to our separateness can be callous, can be good-hearted, and is always condescending."   As Erik and Joan Erikson put it, “aged individuals are often ostracized, neglected, and overlooked; elders are seen no longer as bearers of wisdom but as embodiments of shame” (Erikson, 1997).  Here is the interview with Terry Gross:

 The challenges of aging were nothing new to Hall.  He had lost his wife some years earlier and experienced the role of caregiver, experienced vicariously the difficulties of frailty, and experienced the loss of loved ones just as most older adults have.  In tribute to his wife, in mourning, and in contemplation of aging and dying, Hall wrote a poem entitled, “affirmation”.  The poem begins with the mournful line, “To grow old is to lose everything”.  The poem goes on to describe the crisis old age often entails: “The pretty lover who announces that she is temporary is temporary. The bold woman, middle-aged against our old age, sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.  Another friend of decades estranges himself in words that pollute thirty years.”  These lines allude to the dystonic elements of the ninth stage crisis; conflict, regret, tension, and frustration, to name a few.  The syntonic elements and virtues accessible through resolution of the stage’s crisis include; wisdom, “grand generativity”, and a connection to the past.  Here, Joan and Erik Erikson accept and promote Lars Tornstam’s theory of Gerotranscendence. 

               According to Tornstam, “Gerotranscendence is a shift in metaperspective, from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendental one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction” (Wadenston, 2005).  Through “cosmic communion” with the universe, the circumscription of time, reduced mobility, the sense of self expands to include “a wider range of interrelated others” and death is viewed philosophically as “the way of all living things”. (Erikson, 1997)  The lines that follow the crisis experience in Hall’s "Affirmation" are not only emotive and profound; they reflect the common experience of Gerotranscendence.  “Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge and affirm that it is fitting and delicious to lose everything”. Such confirmation of the theory expressed outside of a theoretical or research framework is of fundamental value to Tornstam.  “When learning about the theory, individuals frequently claim that they recognize aspects of themselves in it. This represents a bottom-up relationship between reality and theory, where the validity of a theory is spontaneously confirmed by individuals of flesh and blood – not by any formal theory testing procedure (Tornstam, 2009).”

"AFFIRMATION"

To grow old is to lose everything.

Aging, everybody knows it.

Even when we are young,

we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads

when a grandfather dies.

Then we row for years on the midsummer

pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,

that began without harm, scatters

into debris on the shore,

and a friend from school drops

cold on a rocky strand.

If a new love carries us

past middle age, our wife will die

at her strongest and most beautiful.

New women come and go. All go.

The pretty lover who announces

that she is temporary

is temporary. The bold woman,

middle-aged against our old age,

sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.

Another friend of decades estranges himself

in words that pollute thirty years.

Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge

and affirm that it is fitting

and delicious to lose everything.

Hall, Donald, Affirmation, 2002, Houghton Mifflin Company.