The Noise

Asking for help has been illuminating. Watching what happens, feeling the agitation it evokes, waiting for responses, hoping for the best, and learning how hard it is to penetrate the noise, distraction, and preoccupation of others, awakens one. Asking is anything but a straight-line experience. It exposes one’s humanity, while revealing the human condition. Somehow, the word “we” comes more alive, vivid, and poignant. Collective wholeness is such a rare bird.

I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, by how difficult it has been for me to get people’s attention. The plea for help does not have much resonance in the modern overactive world. Last time I wrote about how speed kills. These last few days, I’ve come to experience how easily we lose touch with ourselves, and each other, in the mesmerizing rush of this violent version of modern life. I go to pieces each time I answer the call of being a normal agent of this kaleidoscope of activity.

My disabled self relishes the slowness it has imposed upon me. I am Lucky, and I feel a certain compassion when something, like my request for help, reminds me that the price of normalcy in this world is so exacting.  Then I feel the tidal wave of grief that is extracted by this fragmented, speedy life most of us are living. I know I feel inadequate, like I have failed the test, and I should go home and crawl under the bed. Luckily, most the time, I’m off this treadmill.

The treadmill, that is such a good metaphor for the kind of constantly distracting effort that modern life insists upon. From the vantage point of this go-go life, one can easily see how difficult it is to have a semblance of an integrated self. The world of commerce, efficiency and actualization throws everything and everybody into the hopper. What’s left is truly gross national product. Effluvial quantity rather than humane quality.

My simple request for help is making me too aware of the brokenness of this social moment. I wanted to help marginalized old people, only to get a big dose of how marginalized most of us are. The suffering of the old — not-knowing what a miracle we are, and this life is — is a debilitation that is wide-spread in this world. It has become normal suffering.

There isn’t enough money, balm, medicine, or realization to staunch this flow. It is no wonder the Earth is reeling. The old are only the harbingers of what is to come, and of what is happening. Modern times is a misnomer.

There is time for adjustment! There are still neighbors, family, partners —and most importantly, the one within — who can experience the glow of recognition. The redemptive quality of life hasn’t gone away because our attention has been diverted. Life cares more than that for us. Now, we just need to care that much for each other.

Once upon a time, I read of an anthropologist, who claimed he had discovered the missing link between modern man and our animal past. He proclaimed, “it is us.”

We still have time on our hands. Maybe we can discover the missing link within ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Stop

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence

 to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork.

 The rush and pressure of modern life are a form,

 perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

 To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns,

 to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects,

 to want to help everyone in everything, 

is to succumb to violence.”

- Thomas Merton

 

This is a painful one. I have no expectation that anything is going to change. Writing about slowing down is a lost cause. I’ve been writing about the dangerous pace of life since 2005. The Slow Lane got its name from the perception that arose in me, because my stroke stopped me, and revealed a world that I had missed in my daily rush. If that hadn’t happened I might not have had a clue. Now I am impressed by how slippery, and easy to miss, this perception of cultural time is. It is more than the water we swim in, it is the blindness we extol.

I cannot believe that a form of violence this profound could be so invisible, so imperceptible to us. Worse yet, some of us, take pride in being so busy as to be totally oblivious of time.  Some of us even take pride in our harried lateness. There is a form of mass murder that is disguised by rushing. It isn’t necessarily of others, but of the spirit. “Speed kills” in so many ways, some gross and obvious, and others, so subtle and thorough. Being mangled is just part of doing business in this culture.

All of that, the disfigurement of our kind, the disregard of our souls, the neglect of our own higher sensibilities, is the price we pay, while all along we pretend to be evolving.  It would be a painful dance were we not so distracted. Getting more done in less time is a powerful brew. Smiling absently, we have too great a tendency to celebrate our own unconsciousness. The race to the finish line is exactly that.

Lamentably, this painful tract can go on and on. There is no limit to the effectiveness of speed. Happily, there is an antidote. It is called a breakdown.

In this twisted-up world what looks like breakdown is sometimes breakout. In those rare, painful and debilitating moments, through the alchemy of real life, little clearings reveal a less violent way of being. This is a world that moves in a more paradoxical way. The urgency of machine time gives way to the primacy of the eternal moment.

Strangely, old age, the bane of the crowd, provides as much of this lax freedom as most people can handle. For many it is confusing. There are no time stamps, deadlines, or appropriate seasons, no way to objectively measure progress, value, or productivity. Instead there is only the spacious unfolding of desire. The advance that occurs outside of time, without effort or intention. Aging takes one beyond the rush, to the heart of the matter. The clock ticks differently when urgency disappears.

One could even say hurrying debilitates, while slowing down illuminates. In this way, the old, who are pushed out of the way, and treated like they cannot arrive at what’s important, see better what matters, and are essential aspects of the meaningful journey. The old tend to dodder, thereby insuring the magnificence around us gets noticed.

Downshifting happens naturally to all of our benefit. It looks like old age, but it is really the return of good sense.

 

 

 

 

The Second Placenta

Only in old age with the proximity of death

 can one truly experience a personal sense of the entire life cycle. 

That makes old age a unique stage of life …...

                                                        Pulitzer-Prize winning gerontologist Dr. Robert Butler                                                                              

Death is a topic that many old people talk about. Unlike the general culture, older folks know the proximity of death is closer, and therefore consider it a part of their advancing years. Conventional knowledge, what passes for common knowledge, places death in a taboo zone where it is rarely talked about. Old people are not so bound by convention, and non-conventionally consider death part of a larger picture that is surprisingly unfolding as they age. Some say, something unheard of is coming into sight.

This leads to some pretty creative speculation. No one knows what is transpiring when we humans pass from this world, but there are nearly as many stories as there are people. Some are compelling because they convey compassion, justice and peace. Some render to the void all that passes. Some convey only a deep sense of mystery. All revolve around uncertainty.

For a long time now, I’ve had my own story. It started without my knowledge in the seventies when I was in my late twenties, working as a vector control technician for a local mosquito abatement district. I had to learn the biology of all the pests that can plague we humans. Rats, gophers, fleas, yellowjackets and especially mosquitos, were the objects of my day-to-day attentions. In order to combat mosquitos I had to learn about their complex three-stage life cycle. Two stages in water, as pupa and larva, then onto adulthood, in the air.

Later, I began to think of human life composed of stages. Our complexity unfolding along the way. Even later, as I was confronted more with the enigma of death, I began to think about a multi-stage life trajectory. It occurred to me, that like the mosquito, we might with maturity achieve a stage unlike any before. For me, non-material being is as plausible a shift as the mosquitos venturing, with greater maturity, into the air. I became enamored with the idea of death being just another stage of life.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve become less and less afraid of dying.  I think Life has delivered so many unexpected wonders that I basically trust what I know is coming. I know, not everyone can say that. I am Lucky, and I know it. Never-the-less, I am going to disappear, like everyone else. I know that too. So, it is helpful to me to maintain my illusion, and to think of being cradled in a natural form of progression.

Recently, another similar idea came over the horizon.  Suppose this body I rely on  that is breaking down, is really only a temporary vehicle, a placenta, designed biologically, to help sustain and convey what’s inside me, to another different stage of Life. The idea of my body being a second placenta appeals to me. Especially because it conveys the lived experience I’ve had, my current life being a kind of amniotic fluid that has held me and nurtured my development. Maybe I am just aging — slowly maturing — into a yet to be, ripened being.

Anyway, each of us carries an image of the transition we have to make. Each is extremely powerful, determinative, and speculative. I hope yours satisfies you, and contributes to you making the best of your time here. The second placenta does that for me. May something like it be true for you.