I’ve found something I do really well. In fact, it’s effortless. No matter what I do, or how poorly I may do it, I grow older. I didn’t always do it so gracefully, but the inexorable way it kind of marches into, and through my life, taught me a few things. I used to worry about it a lot, then I realized I have no control over it, and happily, I came to relish the growth part of growing older.
Now, I consider it a privilege, a perk associated with this mad thrill ride. Each day passes, I have a host of feeling experiences, and some part of me notices. And strangely, another bigger part, somehow benefits, and I am gifted with more awareness, than I know what to do with. I find growing older to be a complex, mysterious, highlight, of my short time here. I get to experience some perspective, friendship and rare moments of totally mystifying gratification. Oh, it hurts some, and I get tired of the uncertainty, but I know something extraordinary is happening, as I am forgetting my latest promise.
I have watched myself go through fear, loss, heartache, regrets, awe and wonder, apprehension, and now deep reverence. Growing older has brought me nearer to the freedom to be me, and the service I feel called to do, than all of the workshops, designed by well-meaning people. I am a graying stem cell, silently going about my business, becoming something needed and unseen before. Growing older, for me, means becoming barnacled with my connections, accruing from Life, the audacity of originality. I like it, the seeming fact that Life has saved the best for last. Death, for me, is an orgasm, the rest is just foreplay.
Growing older wasn’t intuitively obvious. It looked bad, smelled worse, and had a bad rep. The aged have been the homeless street people, the neglected refuse that deserved to be hidden away, for too long. I fell for it too. The sad diminishment, decaying into helpless nothingness. I’m still battling the rapacious refusal to give human dignity to Life’s finale.
Then something unplanned and unforeseen happened. I got older, began to wrinkle, turned gray, learned how to limp, and discovered a huge reservoir within. I began becoming more while I was becoming less. On the outside I am a typical old broken-down disabled man. But on the inside, mostly unseen, a light is coming on, an awareness is dawning, the landscape is changing. I might have trouble remembering to keep my zipper up, but some seed is breaking open inside. Life is pouring through me, as it never did before. In no way, I, or anyone, could have predicted from the images of the old that prevail in this culture.
The environment isn’t the only thing that has been recently exploited, ignored, and looted. Old people are Nature being mistreated. Growing older has meant playing in a trashed playground, and being considered part of the trash. To me, it is amazing, I would even say, somewhat miraculous, that joy arises with aging. Growing older has brought me to my knees, in more ways than I could have guessed.
The journey in took a lot longer than I planned (somewhere there was an inkling). Ignorance and hubris had to go. Life humiliated me just right. I was raised in a cultural world that didn’t actually believe in an inner life. The religious had their dogma, patented ways to honor the sacred, but little real openings for Mystery. It took really being broken, hopelessly beyond rescue, the wretchedly neglected, living at the margin, to get a break. And, it was inside, there all the time — but discounted — and made other. Growing older is saving me from death by convention. The real spark came out from underneath all that weight.
Growing older is turning me into something else. I don’t know what, but I trust it. That’s good, because I’m not in control. I’m just myself, along for the ride, a passenger now, carried along by a friendly Mystery.
I had worshipped Nature. My greatest grief about being disabled was that I was unable to walk the face of the Earth again. The outdoors was my cathedral. But Nature came through for me anyway. As I say, “I couldn’t go out into Nature, so it came into me.” In truth, Nature had been with me all along, but I guess I had to lose it in order to find it again. Anyway, it became clear to me that I am of Nature, the spark inside is green, growing older is unleashing it.
To conclude this gray rant, I’ll just add, look inside yourself. The cultural world is full of bad advice. Be careful, and know you are endowed. Growing older allowed me some surcease, as I sank into essence. Perhaps it won’t be the same for you — but know — that growing older will come, and a release is in the offing.
