Too often, the human race is a race against time. Until recently, I was a sprinter in this race. Nowadays, blessed by the gift of a long life, my cell phone tells me what I already know: my gait is unsteady, and my risk of falling is high.
I stopped running every day but spend 45 minutes daily on my Schwinn stationary bike. Soon to be 95, I cannot take two steps without my walker. Bob Brown, the “Jock,” my term of self-regard, not public acclaim, is Bob Brown the “recliner recluse.”
I could grieve for the loss of useful vigor, the loss of usefulness itself, or I could try living the life advocated for others in my books, Kindness, Dignity, and Respect: Kind Ways to Dignify, Respect, and Love One Another, and Your Innermost Poetry.
Recently, I have been pondering what it is like to age poetically.
Poets teach us how to behold the world with awe in a child-like manner, a concept deeply rooted in both classical philosophy and modern neuroscience.
Poetry’s verse—meter, rhyme, and rhythm—requires a slower, more deliberate engagement with language that mirrors a meditative “beholding”.
By connecting unrelated ideas through metaphor, poets help our brains recognize new patterns and meanings in the chaos of existence.
Poetry activates the primary reward circuitry in the brain, capable of eliciting peak emotional responses like “chills” and intense “goosebumps”. It can also increase hope in those facing trauma or illness.
Living poetically may be the best form of existence.
This change in internal outlook frequently results in new behavior. Poetry can encourage empathy and compassionate behavior by stimulating brain regions related to understanding others.
Suppose aging isn’t simply a gradual fading away, but instead the ultimate, most challenging revision of our life’s achievements. Could it be that our later years are not meant to be seen as a story of decline, but rather as an unfinished poem, always evolving?
Living aging poetically requires intellectual honestyand integrity.
To live aging poetically is to find a strange, quiet heroism in our failures. There is a specific kind of bravery required to stand before a mirror and find grace in the “failure” of a joint that no longer moves with ease, or a name that sits just out of reach on the tip of the tongue. These are not just signs of wear; they are the openings where the light of a deeper wisdom finally begins to seep through.
The heroics of youth are loud, but the heroics of the afternoon are silent. They are found in the steadfast decision to remain awake to the world’s beauty even when the world seems determined to overlook us.
On meaningfulwordswork.com, I often discuss “Meaningful Words,” but as I grow older, the most significant word I embrace is Yes: yes to slowing down, to being vulnerable, to depending on others, and yes to appreciating the true masterpiece revealed beyond youthful ambition.
To live aging poetically is to move beyond the biology of decline. It means treating the passage of time not as a diminishing resource, but as a medium for intentional expression.
Aging poetically requires reframing the story of our days. Rather than focusing on “the end,” look for the opportunities in the ordinary—the way morning light hits a desk or the weight of a long-held memory—and find the language to name them.
How can life be lived poetically in our later years? It is less about writing verses and more about adopting a “poetic spirit”—a way of seeing the world that transforms the mundane into the meaningful.
It involves active engagement with the aging process as a creative act itself.
The major shift is from “Role to Soul.”
An example of a particular moment in my life when I aimed to make the right choice but experienced “failure”:
During the 3 years of my psychiatric residency training, and for all his life afterwards, I loved my mentor in a fatherly and scholarly way. My own father spent his youth on the Elizabeth River of the Chesapeake Bay, never in school. He had masterful skills in his hands, but he never learned to read or write.
My mentor had two young adult sons; one a scholar, the other a journalist. My mentor died and was buried before I knew about it. His widow was close to my wife and me. She needed $30,000 to save their home. I let her believe I would lend her the money, but I was annoyed by the journalist son who described me scandalously as “our hero.” I did not lend her the money. She died not long afterwards.
For her memorial service, the scholarly son asked me to speak, “because I know you loved my mother.” I spoke, but my words fell on condemning eyes owing to her close friendships, who knew about the loan. I want to fix it to lower the guilt, but I know it is too late.
I appealed to Microsoft’s AI to help me understand this situation in the way I would have appealed to a mentor or older friend. The interaction led me to an understanding that was so profoundly true that it brought tears to my eyes.
This is a profound and heavy burden you have regretted for the past 10 years. It contains the exact tension of a poetic life: the intersection of deep love, class identity (the father who worked with his hands vs. the mentor who worked with his mind), and the messy, human failure of a moment when ego and money collided with grief.
To live this poetically is not to excuse the guilt, but to transcribe it accurately.
Here are three “threads” drawn from your memory. You can take any one of these and weave it into your own understanding:
The Weight of the Word “Hero”: You were “annoyed” by the journalist son’s label. Perhaps because a “hero” is a cardboard cutout, and you were a man of flesh and bone with your own financial anxieties and a complex history. You might explore the failure of being mislabeled: how being called a hero sometimes makes us want to act like a villain justto reclaim our reality.
The Hands of the Father vs. The Mind of the Mentor: Your father couldn’t read, yet he was masterful with his hands. Your mentor was a scholar. In that moment of the loan, perhaps there was a conflict between the practical survival learned from your father and the lofty ideals learned from the mentor. Did the “unlettered” part of your heritage recoil at a financial risk that the “scholarly” part couldn’t justify?
The Silence of the Grave: You spoke at the memorial to “condemning eyes.” This is the heroism of the late afternoon: standing in the truth of one’s own failure. You cannot “fix” the loan, but you can “fix” the record by being the one who tells the story honestly. In a poetic life, an honest confession is often more heroic than a perfect record.
To live this poetically now, you might consider that the “debt” has changed form. It is no longer about $30,000; it is about the currency of grace.
You are essentially paying that debt back to the universe by offering your readers a map of a real human heart—one that failed, one that felt “scandalized” by praise, and one that is brave enough to sit with the silence of the “condemning eyes.”
How does it feel to look at those threads?
The tentacles of the poverty of my youth (born in a welfare clinic during the great depression) grasped my wallet tighter than I was even aware of until now, with your help, when my soul was asked to share.
The explanation lightens a theme of several dark areas of my past. I am discovering meanings of which I was unaware, but it powerfully reveals flaws in my character.
In 2026, we understand that the “architecture of scarcity” built in childhood does not simply vanish when the bank balance changes; it stays in the marrow of our bones.
Your realization that your soul was being asked to share—not just your wallet—is the pivot point of your article and your poetic aging.
The Ghost in the Wallet
The “tentacles of poverty” you describe are a form of generational memory. Born in a 1931s welfare clinic, your first breath was drawn in an environment where “enough” was a myth. When the widow requested the money, your response came not only from who you are now, but also from the child at the clinic who once understood that resources mean survival. To age poetically is to recognize that your “no” wasn’t an act of malice, but a reflex of survival that outstayed its welcome.
There is a profound difference between a transaction and a “soul-share.”
The Transaction: $30,000 to save a house.
The Soul-Share: Relinquishing the safety net that your father’s calloused, unlettered hands never had the luxury to build.
The journalist son’s “hero” label felt scandalous because it demanded a purity of spirit that your history of scarcity wouldn’t allow. You weren’t being asked to be a bank; you were being asked to be a “hero” who had forgotten the fear of being poor.
In the poetry of aging, the “heroic” act is no longer the loan you didn’t give—it is the confession of the innermost self. Just as a muscle cramps from old injuries, your spirit cramps when asked to let go of that sum. Writing this for your newspaper is a way of “fixing it” through radical transparency. You are showing your readers that even a mentor’sprotégé can be haunted by the welfare clinic.
I realized too late that she wasn’t asking for my money; she was asking for my soul to share in the vulnerability of loss. But my soul was still a child of the Depression, guarding its crumbs with a ferocity that even I didn’t recognize until the eyes at the memorial service mirrored my own failure back to me.”
Does this framing of the “soul-share” help you navigate the guilt, seeing it as a conflict between your past survival and your present grace?
Tremendously helpful…as if speaking to a cognitive therapist who also attended a seminary.
A distinctive form of healing occurs when clinical insight—comprehending the underlying causes of childhood poverty—and poetic wisdom—interpreting the significance of guilt—converge.
As you move from AI to your own keyboard, consider this: the reason your editor told you to “write whatever is on your heart” is likely because he sensed you were carrying a weight that only ink could lighten.
Most people spend their aging years polishing their trophies. By showing your “condemning eyes,” you are offering a map for others who are also haunted by the “tentacles” of their own past.
To bridge the “child of the Depression” with the man who now curates “meaningful words,” your conclusion needs to offer a resolution that isn’t about erasing the past, but about integrating it.
The poetic life doesn’t require a perfect history; it requires a truthful one.
I cannot go back to that memorial service and rewrite my silence, nor can I peel back the ‘tentacles‘ of 1931 that reached through time to stay my hand. That debt remains unpaid in the currency of the world.
I’m learning that aging means embracing the ‘second draft‘ of my soul. While my youth was about reaching heights my father couldn’t, now, in my ninth decade, real courage is showing my contradictions openly.
I see now that my ‘meaningful work‘ is not just about the words I write for others, but about the honesty I owe to myself. We are all, in some way, children of a private Depression—carrying ancient fears that occasionally make us smaller than we wish to be.
Maybe the greatest thing we can offer as we grow older isn’t a perfect history, but the humility to admit, “I felt fear, I’m only human, and I’m still learning how to be generous.” Ultimately, our failures can become poetic when we turn them into a bridge that helps someone else struggling with their own past.
Robert S. Brown, MD, PHD a retired Psychiatrist, Col (Ret) U.S. Army Medical Corps devoted the last decade of his career to treating soldiers at Fort Lee redeploying from combat. He was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Education at UVA. His renowned Mental Health course taught the value of exercise for a sound mind.
