The gift of aging

                24: 1 ‘And Abraham was aged ((היה זקן, well along in days and Hashem blessed him with everything’

                The biggest battle of our age is not radical Islam, not a sinking economy, and not cancer, but aging.  We are all in search of everlasting youth, and the great desire of man is to conquer both death and the process that leads to it.  However, it could be we are looking at it all wrong.  A midrashic source from this week’s parsha on the verse above[i] says the following:  Abraham did not age.   He exclaimed to G-d:’ father and sons go to one place and no one knows who to honor.  And if you were to crown us with old age people would know who to honor’.  G-d said to him, ‘you have asked for a good thing, and with you it will start’.  Prior to his time in the book there was no old age and since Abraham stood up (and complained), G –d gave him old age as it says, ‘And Abraham was aged’.  Further, in a different part of the midrash it says that ‘old age’ is a crown and beautiful thing.  In our purview, beauty is associated with youth and vigor.  So why did Abraham feel a lack without wrinkles and a white beard; what was he seeking?

The way to understand Abraham’s request is with the following metaphor.  Imagine if a person worked out his whole life and his muscles never changed.  That would be a cruel state of being- a person has worked hard and has nothing to show for it.  That is what was behind Abraham’s request to G-d.  Abraham’s whole life mission was to bring holiness to the body, which is why circumcision began with him.   He was the first person to understand that spiritual enlightenment lay not with meditative mantras on a mountain, but with real change in this world.  And whenever a person wants to make a genuine change in the world, it has to start at home first, with ourselves, which means making the body into a vehicle that expresses soul.

                After a life time of hard work in making the body into an expression of the soul, Abraham complained to G-d and said, ‘hey, I’ve been working hard my whole life and I have nothing to show for it’.  In response, G-d gave him a wizened body: lines of wisdom and a face of care and compassion.  Why is it that wisdom is associated with a white head of hair and a white beard?  Because white is the idea of clarity, and the idea that the façade is not important, rather what is behind it.  The whiter a person gets the more the inside is revealed.  It shows that what is driving life is not the body itself, as white is actually associated with death,  but an inner light .  It is no surprise then that a beard in Hebrew is called a ‘זקן’ or ‘old man’.  The idea of a beard is that ideas flow down from the head into the body.  Old age should reveal a lifetime of accomplishment  in this area, where the ideas of the soul slowly imprint on the body.   Therefore, think twice next time you buy an anti-wrinkle cream, as those wrinkles may be the product of the best type of growth.

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[i] the midrash is bothered by the words ‘היה זקן’. Why does the verse have to tell us that he was an old man? We already know that he was past one hundred years old