Love and Growing Old
This article is derived from a podcast episode which can be found here – https://www.barrylong.org/podcast/love-and-growing-old
Aging often brings a heightened sense of perspective. Work and career pressures typically recede, children grow up and become independent, and many of the responsibilities that once seemed urgent begin to fall away. Yet, for some, there is also a sense of finality—an assumption that certain doors are closed for good. Barry Long, in his talk delivered in Bristol in 1992, speaks to this.
Addressing a large audience, he speaks about the freedom, possibility, and richness that remain available at every stage of life – he addresses those who are growing older, especially women, informing them on how to remain open to love, regardless of age or past experiences.
He acknowledges that many may feel content without a partner and even find the idea of relationship burdensome. Nonetheless, he emphasizes that if love — or the possibility of a good, honest partnership—presents itself, one should be receptive and that age is no barrier to intimacy or genuine connection when it arises naturally.
Central to Barry’s message is the need to be at peace within oneself, cultivating a sense of well-being and integrity in every aspect of life. By getting one’s life right and releasing emotional conditions such as fear, resentment, or longing, we create the internal space for the right person to appear — at the right time and under the right circumstances. He cautions against living in a condition of restless yearning; instead, trusting that when love is meant to come, it will, and it will arrive as part of life’s inherent goodness.
The following sections are drawn directly from Barry's talk–
The process of Life
'Life is its own solution. Life is not perverse, although we often think it is. Life is a process, a wonderful process of integrity. There is justice and rightness in life, as long as we can stand back far enough and observe it. The difficulty is with personal love, that it makes us put our eyes right up close to the scene, and we can't see the total picture.
One of the things about getting older is that age is, or does necessarily pull us back from the scene—or should do—and we're able to take a wider look at life and the world and the life we've lived. The drive to do, to succeed, to achieve, to build has generally receded.
That's because we come in, in a brand new, fresh body, as I say, with our potential future already in it—it's like being wound up—we're wound up like a little clockwork—and we're released. And we bound into life—and we think we're never going to die—because there's this wonderful spring in us.
This process going through the years, the decades—and towards the end the spring starts to lose its tension and the older person is supposed to lose their tension as well. And life becomes easier as you get older—because life is not perverse, but is its own solution.
Remaining open to love
We should never consider ourselves "too old" for love. I have encountered countless men and women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies who believe the time for romantic connection has passed. Many feel content without a partner and, in fact, regard the possibility of relationship as a burden rather than a blessing. For instance, a woman might feel that another partnership would require too much caretaking or compromise — especially if her earlier experiences were difficult.
Be open all your life for the possibility of love coming in as man or woman, no matter how old you are. And be open even to the possibility of making love, no matter how old you are. You don't have to make love—you are free. But don't have an attitude against it. Don't ever think that you're too old. It is not true. You are never too old to stop making physical love. Given that the man or woman arrives and you are drawn together, you are never too old. Because when you open yourself for love, you open your psyche — if you say, "well, I don't like man much —" that's a wrong attitude. You close yourself off to a part of life.
It doesn't make any difference to say, "look, I'm available for love anytime, no matter what my age, and if he turns up anytime, I will be available. But it is my right to know the man that I want to love. So I'm not going to make love unless I want to, but I'm available." So you open yourself up for that possibility. The most amazing things happen in this way, as they've happened to you anyway.
A lot of older people have made love, and the love that has been made, as I say, even if it has been sexual, the two bodies together is God's way or life's way of exchanging energies – and although our life might have been happy due to sexual experiences and ignorance when we were younger, and by the time we were older, we discover, 'well, my God, I never did know love that Barry Long's talking about, but I hear it, but it didn't happen to me as such. And don't be disappointed. Don't be discouraged by that. It was your lot. Everything that happened to you was absolutely right to make a finer a man or a finer a woman of you. Not everybody experiences the same experiences. Each of us is unique. And each of our experience is unique. For even the same experience has a uniquely different effect upon us according to our lights or our uniqueness.
Don't try to live like the other person. Don't look out and say, 'well, that's happened to them, it should happen to me.' Or 'I want that to happen to me.' Your life is how it is. You can make it better by being honest and by being in contact with me inside – that fundamental place – and getting your life right. As soon as you start to live honestly, you start to get your life right because you can't put up with unhappiness, which always derives from some dishonesty somewhere, some fear in you. You're afraid of something. You're afraid to change things. Endeavor not to be afraid.
Remember that you can't do anything before it's time. So don't get a feeling that 'I've got to do it,' because I don't teach that. I do teach that you have to act. You have to do. But you have to recall you cannot do anything before it's time. And yet you've always got to question by looking at the difficulty of the problem, 'perhaps it's time now,' and in five minutes time if it occurs to you, 'perhaps it's time now.' And so on. That is vigilance. And that keeps you alive. Because you don't go into the dream of everything's all right. Before long, you get into monotony, don't you? Because the consciousness is not present. It's either talking about the past or it's just dreaming on thinking about anything. You are man and woman. You come to life by living like I am speaking about.
Grandfather and grandmother were once guru
Unfortunately, the older people of today, or the great majority that I seem to encounter or hear about are filled with emotion towards the end of their life. They, if you want to tell them the truth, they can't hear it because they put their emotions forward.
Once in this society, the grandfather and grandmother were guru, in the society of the East. Grandfather was guru and grandmother was the quiet and passive woman who had lived and raised children and loved man – she was the passive guru, a woman of love that could guide the younger ones in matters of love and family, and guru grandfather was he who had the wisdom to speak to the young, the younger ones, and pass on his wisdom of his years. Guru was everywhere. Today there's very little guru in our society because the older people get emotional.
You've heard it spoken of enough by me about mums and dads – they are just not up to it – they are dishonest – they are dishonest in their love life and they become dishonest in their lives – they get things wrong. As loving as they are, and they are loving because they are mothers and fathers who, you know, went to work and fed us and really stayed home from when they could have had a good time because we were sick and looked after us – that is impersonal love looking down from the moon, that is all the God as every being, serving every being in some way or other – and they have loved us, and they have loved us as persons too, they have loved us personally, and although it has made them a bit emotional and caused unhappiness, they have done their best. We must know that about our parents. Everybody has done their best.
If you only teach a young body, a baby, ignorance, as we do is our society, and all our parents and all the parents before them were ever taught ignorance, you can't really blame that body when it grows up into adulthood and has other children – you can't blame it for its ignorance, can you? They did their best in the raising of us. They certainly did their best. And it wasn't easy for them, was it? Many times they had to die to self and overcome themselves to serve you and me. So, when it comes to judging the parents, do always acknowledge that they did their best.
Metamorphosis