Rescue

She was a new member of a group I was in. She told us the following story as a way of helping us get to know her a little more. She opened the story by saying that when she gets stressed, she watches animal rescue videos. That’s how she saw the videos that revealed this story. When I grasped what the video held, what the story meant for us, I knew I wanted to write about it. In this case, it seemed to me, that this rescue rescues us.

She shared what had touched her so much. The video was about the rescue of lab animals. In this case it was a group of chimpanzees. They had spent from 30 to 50 years locked in cages in the nation’s laboratories. They were gathered, and taken to a chimp refuge, that had been constructed for them. The people at the refuge had put them in an indoor enclosure to give them a chance to adjust to each other and the alien environment they were in. There was a larger outdoor enclosure for them, and the video depicted what happened when they were introduced to it.

Finally, the day came when a door to the outside opened. The chimps had never been freed outdoors before. When the door opened grey-muzzled chimps stood and just stared. They had never seen the sky before. They had never trod on the earth, or seen and climbed a tree. They just looked out the door.

After a time, one ventured slowly out. Then another. Soon many of them entered, what must have been to them, a very strange landscape. Then they did something remarkable. They stopped and hugged each other. They embraced each other for a while, then broke up, and went on and explored the whole enclosure. Some climbed trees, some walked around, some played with each other, and some held back and remained at the door. The video ended shortly after that, with the commentator reporting that the rescued chimps were proceeding to learn how to recreate their dominance hierarchy and resume normal chimp life.

The story of these rescued chimps, and particularly their hugs, did something to me. I knew instantly that their story is our story. That we, as grey-muzzled humans, had spent most of our lives enclosed in a reality that isn’t natural to us. We are being released, by age, and by circumstance, into a larger enclosure. In some way, each of us old ones, is like those lab chimps. I haven’t seen my own natural habitat before. The landscape of old age is before me. Its never been seen before. And it is going to take a good, long hug to explore it.

I am an advocate for community. Maybe, that’s why the chimp’s hugs touched me. I have said that my real work is the restoration of humanity’s natural social habitat. That is what I experienced when the chimps embraced. I know that the instinct to embrace is a survival mechanism. We are social animals. If our lives are threatened we are drawn together, toward that embrace. The last, and greatest comfort, we can draw as we face the unknown, is the body of another. There is something about that bodily warmth, the quivering solidity of flesh, the heartbeat of another, which calms animal alarms. When we embrace another, we are embracing our selves.

It is my sense that the exploration of the unknown landscape we have been released into, (by virtue of reaching this advanced age) is facilitated by our embrace. For years now, I have been marveling at how much our old minds are enlivened by being in each other’s presence. There is no immunity to the ravages of an ageist culture like elder community. The warm embrace of rheumy hugs, familiar laughter, knowing looks, and compassionate hearts, rejuvenates my soul and lends resilience to my efforts. I am going to my grave, but not without knowing something about being thoroughly human. My sense of community gives me that.

Chimpanzees hugging reminded me about what really matters. There is no landscape like that of another similar body. Getting old, and being deemed useless, has allowed me to taste a freedom deeper than anything I imagined. Now a chimp’s hug, has reassured me. The way to explore this new largeness is together. I have experienced how my greying visage has come more to life because of the community I’m immersed in. The uncertain and awkward stories we have told each other, the heartbreaks and triumph we’ve shared, and the our tentative embraces, have introduced a new world. They are also providing me the temerity to explore it.

I end this piece with a poem. These are the words of Annie Dillard. I found them in her book Holy, The Firm. I turned them into a poem. They speak for themselves.  Each of us is alone. Each of us is a part of community, connected by who we are, as much as what we do. In any case, there is only us.

                                                            No One But Us

There is no one but us.

There is no one to send,

nor a clean hand,

nor a pure heart

on the face of the earth,

nor in the earth

but only us,

a generation comforting ourselves

With the notion

That we have come at an awkward time,

That our innocent fathers are all dead —

As if innocence has ever been —

And our children busy and troubled,

And we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,

Having each of us chosen wrongly,

Made a false start, failed,

Yielded to impulse

And the tangled comfort of pleasures,

And grown exhausted,

unable to seek the thread,

weak, and involved.

But there is no one but us.

There never has been.

                                                                              From Holy The Firm by Annie Dillard

l/d

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Here are the links to the YouTube videos that informed this piece.

https://youtu.be/mW_pK-b5YW0

https://youtu.be/ExEjXLMd4VA

Reverence

It started many years ago, after my stroke. I started writing, what later turned out to be my first book Embracing Life. I thought I was dying, so I didn’t think much of my intuition, at that time. I had been exposed to a lot of transpersonal thinking in graduate school. There was a lot of interest in states of consciousness, particularly enlightenment. Through investigating and teaching community I had grown an interest in development and came to see the relationship between consciousness and growth. And, in the final stages of writing, I wondered if old people were more likely to reach, what I called the farthest reaches of human development.

I was surprised later, when Xan and The Elder’s Salon came into my life, to have this thought reoccur and be confirmed. I discovered, mostly through observation, that life-experience, under the right circumstances, occasionally led to really refined sensibilities. Mostly the old people I observed had no idea that they possessed any unusual awareness.

I’ve been paying rapt attention to this phenomenon ever since. The years have accumulated and so have my impressions. Now, I tend to think something important is happening with some older people, something so significant that I can no longer justify waiting to describe it. There is a state of consciousness that some old folks manifest that goes beyond the expectations of experts in the field of human development. I call it reverence. I’ll get into why later, but for now, I just want to say that what I have noticed throws a lot of our culture’s images of human potential, aging, and consciousness, way off.

The gold standard for human development has been the observations of Erik Erikson. He enumerated, and described, 8 typical stages of human psychosocial development. There is a lot more to be said about Erik, his life, and the orientation that brought him to his observations. If the reader has such interest you will not satisfy it here. My intention is to focus attention upon Erikson’s final stage (from age 65 until death), he called it integrity vs. despair. It is my sense, that while Erikson’s view is germane and generally pertinent (regarding integrity), his schema is too brief, and leaves out an important facet of development that likely happens only late in life.

Erikson emphasizes integrity at this latest stage. His focus upon the satisfaction that arises with a life lived in alignment with self-chosen values seems very apt. Conversely the discovery that one’s life doesn’t add up can lead to despair and depression. So, I don’t have a problem with these assertions. They seem correct, but do not go far enough. What I see, and what I anticipate with the combination of the longevity revolution and the demographic surge of the baby boomers, is that a new longer life means that late life is expanded and encompasses more.

What I see is that some old people shift their self-image and their sense of the world they live in. Erikson had noticed how people became more inner directed with age, but he didn’t live long enough to know what this shift accomplishes. My observation, plus the research that is being done with people in their 90’s and over a hundred (the fastest growing demographic in the human population), reveal that this shift grows more and more significant with age. As a result, some old people have a very different take on their existence.

In some regard, that is why I think it important to make clear that a new, and very different, perception exists. I’m not going to describe this consciousness, this new psycho-social awareness in great detail here, but I am going to affirm the perception that there is a kind of ripening taking place, and that it is the result of changes that take place within.

The old are much more likely to perceive themselves to be a part of the Cosmos and constantly in relationship with it. They have gained an inner as much as outer perspective on existence. Reverence for being part of a larger being totally changes their outlook. They know themselves to be a contiguous part of a much larger process of Life. This alters their perception of themselves, others, the environment, and the human experiment. Death is less frightening, happiness more common, and they are much more likely to grasp the big picture as it is.

For too long humanity has suffered with images of isolation, competition, violence and cruelty.  This is an accurate picture of the immaturities of humankind. But, the new picture, that emerges when one grasps what human maturity is like, suggests that humanity has another face. Reverence, a new take on human ripeness, reveals a species, that has the potential to adapt to and revere life.

That, I think, is worth knowing.