The Privilege of Aging: Savoring the Fullness of Life, by Kamla K. Kapur
Park Street Press, 9798888500521, 256 pages, July 2024
In this chronicle of her journey with aging, Kamla K. Kapur shares wisdom and tips for aging in a way that is both graceful and life-affirming and is also a gift to those left behind. Much of The Privilege of Aging deals with Kapur’s own life adventures, and she highlights the lessons for us as we read her beautiful prose.
Kamla K. Kapur was born in India and traveled to America for her university studies at Kent State, the University of Iowa, and UC San Diego. She was a professor at Grossmont College in San Diego, teaching creative writing for plays, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her publications include short stories, poems, plays, and several books. One of her seven other books is a retelling of Rumi’s tales in her own beautiful language. Three of her plays have been staged in both California and New York. She shares her life with her husband Payson R. Stevens, spending six months in California and six months in the Himalayas each year. You may read more of Kapur’s writings on her blog or learn more about her on her website.
This book includes 34 chapters and a preface that sets out the main ideas in this chronicle of aging. Although it appears that the book has no real structure, no true beginning, and no real ending, the book flows naturally. With each chapter, Kapur peels back the layers of her story, revealing life lessons that will touch, entertain, and teach us all. She sprinkles in quotes from famous authors, poets, and other famous people.
These are my favorite lines from the preface:
“One of the greatest gifts of aging is slowing down the pace. It allows us to experience and taste life fully with awareness, attention, senses and mind awake. For this we need time and we have it, Hallelujah. Going slowly is also imperative to avoid injuries and accidents. . . . I know the joys of slowing down, for most among them doing just one thing at a time and doing it with attention.”1
What interests me most about the book are the topics she explores, such as growing old with your partner, enjoying simple pleasures like birds in the yard, and dealing with the deaths of parents and siblings. As someone who is looking at her 70th birthday in a few months, aging is now very real to me! I learned something from every story and every chapter from Kapur’s pen.
She writes as if we are sitting together, she sipping her chai and me enjoying my latte. The stories flow easily and effortlessly off the page. I can feel her presence, her warmth, and her compassion for me as a fellow traveler.
My favorite chapter is the one entitled “Letting Go,” in which she shares the loss of her beloved sister to cancer. In it she talks of death and grief and the ego’s denial of our own mortality. Such a beautiful and troubling chapter–one I have read and reread more than a few times:
“I go for a walk in the gray darkness of a lustrousless dawn. The flowers blooming cheekily in people’s well tended front gardens are an affront to my suffering. Beauty lies dead and dying around me. I see a heron’s white wings glimmering in the budding blue and gold light of morning.I think, I will use the color of my suffering as I weave my book.”2
I also enjoyed the chapter “Corona Cocoon” in which Kapur shares a time she suffered a “crisis of faith.”3 Her husband supports and encourages her, as he helps her focus on gratitude and her many blessings. Then, as the Covid-19 lockdown is about to begin, they pack and begin driving down the snowy Himalayan mountain in order to board a plane and fly to their other home in San Diego:
“For almost an hour we drove in a snow flurry with large, wet snowflakes lashing our windows. P loved the snow so much he stopped many times to film it. As if one can capture a snowflake. It is a lesson I am only just beginning to learn while knowing full well that I will never learn it fully. Capturing this ever evolving story, which moves on even as I write, is yet another attempt to capture a snowflake.”4
The Privilege of Aging is great for anyone past mid-life. I enjoyed Kapur’s stories and her journey so very much and her sweet prose was like soft music, almost like bells tinkling softly in another room. This book will make a great gift for anyone staring down a BIG birthday on the far side of 50. I plan to keep my copy on my nightstand and turn to it before sleep on those nights that I feel rudderless and adrift. Her last bit of prose on the last page encourages and emboldens me on my own journey:
“The word, concept, image of adventure has served me well as a survival tool. Only my perspective will be changed by planetary events and our changed circumstances. What is old age but the opportunity to experience yourself and life from another perspective?”5
PJ Spur is an author, intuitive, spiritual mentor, astrologer, and hypnotist. She does tarot & oracle card readings, natal chart readings, grief coaching, and relationship healing. She also has hosted a weekly “Coffee & Cards” event with her Soul Compass Community for the past four years. Her book Navigating Grief with Grace is available on Amazon. Learn more at www.dearpj.com