Wonder

It’s Sunday morning and I want to write a Slow Lane. But, I’m hesitating. The things I thought I might write about, are either too cool or too hot. Neither will really do.  So, I’m just sitting here wondering. I want to write, to enjoy the respite from being so physically broken, that these little writing meditations allow. Now, I’m just sitting in silence, waiting for some inspiration to strike me.

As I do, my mind wanders.  I’m remembering the new men’s group that met for the first time yesterday. It was a complex, uncomfortable event. Every time I start-up with a set of new men, it feels like trying to start a conversation with my father — awkward silence, or small talk. 

Eventually a lot got surfaced. We marveled at being a group of old men meeting. All of us wanted to compare notes, we were sharing in something men in this culture don’t do, and never really get to experience so thoroughly. Getting old, publicly, becoming vulnerable, visibly. Out of our first meeting came a sense of wonder. We seemed to know enough, that there was widespread agreement, that we didn’t know much of anything. This left us with a lot to wonder about.

We never tried for any kind of agreement, but it seemed to me, we shared bafflement — at getting so old, at having slipping bodies, at wondering what we were for, at aching with uncertainty about what we might have to give. Losing so much left us feeling raw.

It was a good and unusual experience. There is no way to evaluate it. We were all virgins, meeting together, to do something we didn’t know how to do. Pretty extraordinary for a group of men. I liked it, except I can’t exactly say why. I guess I think meeting — if only this once — was such a courageous, and counter-cultural thing to do.

It left me wondering. I notice I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Feeling awed by what’s happening, or overwhelmed, by the mystery that seems folded into everything. There was a point in yesterday’s group, when we men surmised, that perhaps, our ability to wonder was what we have to offer. I like the notion of being aged into wonder. It makes me feel like Life knows what it is doing.

So, anyway, as I’m getting older — heading toward the horizon — I’ve found myself thinking, about whether I have anything to leave behind — for other’s coming along? My guess is no. It seems that people benefit by discovering for themselves. I care, but I’ve learned from my disability helplessness, that caring is complicated, and that people, no matter their circumstances, seem to thrive best, when they have weathered uncertainty, for what matters to them. 

In the meantime, I ponder. It seems like it is good that I’m getting slower and slower, more silent, less confident, and more uncertain. I’m slowly sinking into non-existence, becoming invisible, a shade, soon to be forgotten. I expect I’ll make a good anonymous ancestor. Though, of course, I wonder about that.

Conjecture, that is what I seem to be good at now. Living has taken away all of my certainties. It fascinates me, that all of my lifetime of losses, has brought me to this place. I wonder, if there is something inevitable, and natural, about wondering this much.