Nature’s Call

 Hold on a second. I have to answer Nature’s call. After emptying my bowels and my bladder, I wonder about all the other ways Nature has been calling, or as I say, “knocking at the door.” Somehow, Nature called me into existence. I am here becau a natural sequence occurred which set me on the course of being human.

Despite wrong learning, and with misperception abounding, I have floundered around enough, to suffer from the dis-ease of not knowing what we humans are capable of. Nature keeps calling me into the bathroom, at the same time, it keeps calling me into the mysteries of aging.

There is a whole lot of being human that is organic, predestined by our animal nature. Unfortunately, somewhere back there in time, most ofour ancestors swallowed the kool-aid, or had the sense beat out of them. So badly, that a belief that we humans are not still part of Nature prevailed. Wrong. From the moment of conception, throughout the amazing uptake of additional complexity, to the wizened wrinkles and loss of memory that ripens us all, Nature is turning the evergreening wheel.  How could we have pretended otherwise?  Yet, we still do —some of us don’t realize that Life is having its way with us.

That belief, as incredulous as it is, still rebounds harshly on those of us who are aging. Its as if the laws of Nature don’t apply to us.  Graying isn’t natural, and Nature hasn’t any surprises left for those in the later stages of ripening. Nature’s call is confined to passing by-products, and has nothing to do with the latter years. Life eschews waste, and saves the best for the ripening times. The environmental crisis, and the neglect of the aging, share the same root. Each assumes that Nature is out there — and is there, for our use.

This isn’t an environmental scree, it is a plea that we humans enjoy the fact that the garden is within us, and that wildness and natural wily-ness is part of us, even as, and maybe especially as, we get older. Nature is each one of us. Nature’s call is coming right through each one of us, each as naturally original as a snowflake, or a monsoon.

Some old people are feeling the impetus of Life. It is stirring them to go further. The lucky ones, they suffer gladly, the vagaries of Life, becoming polished by the combination of hardship and glory. They bring the unknown to us, naturally and nutritiously. Life thrives when it gets to go on to complexify, while it is simplifying itself. Old age is an essential part of the whole! Ageism is the gravitational pull of the past, while aging is the gravitational pull of what is. Nature’s call.

There isn’t much more to say. Words fail anyway. As a human, an elderly one at that, I have learned that the only say I have, is how I respond to Nature’s call. The way I see it all now is like a dance. Nature leads, and I follow as creatively as I can. How I respond is who I am, and Nature’s call dreams me up.