“We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.”
Kabir
Surprise is the marker I use for being alive. Life has a way of knocking over my applecart. Every shocker stuns and reorients me. I’ve lived long enough now, to see these moments of disequilibrium and dismemberment, as favors. The greatest surprise, is how these dumbfounding blows, make me a dazed but better person. Gifts have rained down on me — some have been hard to take — because they have asked me to go past my comfort zone. Now, that I’ve grown older, a gift like this, always introduces me to a familiar stranger, my unknown self.
Some say the later years can be filled with regret. Letting go and forgiving oneself certainly has to happen. It is painful, experiencing again, the insensitivities of your younger, more naïve, life. Memories of more choice-less times, are always poignant, but seeing how you hurt yourself, and others, changes the poignant to a form of revelation. Then, when one realizes, that a lifetime pattern has been revealed, one’s internal fortitude turns to jelly. Life has turned things upside down.
The dismay, and sometimes depression, that can follow such a revelation, threatens to disrupt everything. What had seemed to be a slow descent into dotage, suddenly becomes a painful life review. The slow loss of mind accelerates into recollection, and the past has gained a new more revealing life.
The revelation of the past, in my case, brought home the innocence of a neglected childhood. I made a good choice from a very limited palette of options. It worked at the time. And, I couldn’t know, I was committing myself to a pattern of behavior that would turn out destructive and soul-debilitating. Carrying the pattern into the rest of my life, I now can see, has been my downfall, and is a failure that now haunts me.
Now, I have to look at my journey from innocence to insensitivity. I can forgive myself for having been naïve and less than aware. I was so young and unformed. But, I’m not now, and I’m still prone to be so insensitive. Forgiveness now depends on me changing the behavior. Can I do it? I don’t really know. Can an old human change his spots?
Evidently, Life thinks I can. I’m pretty sure this awareness, coming to me now, while I’m still alive, is a painful reminder that I still have potential, time and desire. Ripening, for me, is an exacting process. It isn’t always fun, is sometimes painful, and is frequently surprising. I will stop what I used to do. Somehow. Life has given me a chance to become a me I can cherish. Wow! What a gift!
The painful process of seeing my childhood naivete and innocence, the pattern of insensitivity that grew from it, the identity it gave me, and the desire to choose again, has been one of the best, most unsung, gifts of growing older. It hasn’t been fun to receive, but even at this late a date, it has made my life so much better. It reminds me, that I am not Lucky by accident.
Neither are you!
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