Deep and Slow

 

It is the deep and slow
that survive,
the deep and slow that
hold up the land

It is why we are here,
together for a while:
to help each other slow
enough to hear the deep,
to feel the deep, to find
it in ourselves. 

                                                                  It is why we are here.

                                                                                from To Be An Elder by Mark Nepo

It is why we old people are here. To notice depth and to embody it. That means, in some way, to become it. The experience, sensitivity, and nearness to death, alter awareness, and promote a more layered perspective, that can give expression to what lies underneath us all. Depth is an antidote to the crisis of shallowness that debilitates our society. There is inherent in the elder experience of some folks, access to a penetrating awareness. The ecosystem of beliefs that defines the surface of our daily societal interactions suffers from lack of nuance — the many-layered depth — that some elders know.

This awareness is slow. It is composed of multiple layers, connections and potencies. The moment is an opening to all that can happen. It takes a while to become palpable, and even then, it is laden with probability. Slowness honors unknown enormity. Slowness salutes uncertainty and thusly pays homage. Beneath it all is the unknown, the face of providence, to which slowness is reverence.

Getting old is more than just aging. Old souls quicken awareness, and paradoxically slow it down. The deep is slow because essence unfolds according to laws of its own — the truth is always a multi-faceted thing. The humility that befalls the many humiliations of a long-life, prepares one for being partially alive to arising wholeness. What the deep delivers is always greater than what we expect, always more than we are prepared for.

Mystery and aging are tied together. The deep has a pact with slowness, and this pact governs the ripening process. One cannot get riper without deepening and slowing. It is this natural inclination that makes an elder such a timely host for the honoring of depth.  Perhaps some of the most poignant suffering the world knows comes because elder depth is not adequately recognized. The world is mired in the superfluous.

There isn’t a solution to this imbalance. The self-correcting elements of the larger system will eventually prevail. But, in the meantime, find the way to slow. Think of doing that as taking a retreat from the normal hub-bub of your life. Depth is after you — slowing down makes you a more inviting target. You want to be this kind of bulls-eye. If you are a slow hot mess, then Life is on its way.

Being depth is inherently slow. Feeling it inside takes a while, decades according to the author. This is one of the things we need each other for. The complexity we are to each other, supports the emergence of this kind of being. Slowly, we can be turned into a kind of human kaleidoscope, a multi-faceted sponge, aware of the many nuances, that make up the depths. Falling all over each other has a humanizing and deepening effect, that is good for releasing depth into the world.