The Self-Needs

I studied developmentalism. From about 40, until I was well over 50, I had an avid interest in the way we humans grew. What led me to elders, was an aspect of this interest. After the stroke, and its effect upon my consciousness, I theorized that old people had the best chances of reaching the farthest levels of development. I surmised that a longer life, might translate into a life filled with more educative and transformative hardship.

The Elder Salon, was my way to finding out if there was any merit to this idea. Gratefully, now I know there is. But, that isn’t the reason I am writing today. Along the way, I found out, that human self-satisfaction arose out of some simple, and seldom talked about, things. These are things, I think are best shared.

Sometime during graduate school, I read a book, entitled The Adjusted American (1958), that pointed out that America seemed to be caught-up in, what the authors called, a “normal neurosis.” Normal because everyone did it, and neurotic because it never produced the desired outcome. People were caught-up in caring too much about what others thought 

It turns out, that later developmental research (in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s) showed that this tendency is a by-product of early human development. It is a feature of the early desire all humans are born with —the desire to fit in, for survival’s sake.

That was interesting, and accounted for the some of the difficulty that people experienced. But more interesting, was how the book went on to describe basic adjustment needs, that I have learned to consider essential to the well-being of all of us.

There are only three of these needs. They seem very simple, but as you will see, they demand a lot more attention than most of us give them. Ultimately, they are needs we humans have, that we can only fulfill for ourselves. That is what makes them so interesting, and so dicey. Here they are;

1)   A need for an acceptable self-image. One that contains every element of who you consider yourself to be. From the one you are alone, to the one you are with others. This need evolves as you learn things about yourself. If your self-image is inaccurate, you are going to find yourself in a lot of situations you are not really happy about. Inflated or deflated self-image leads to a host of problems.

2)   You also need a self-image that is accurate. Here is where one needs the integrity to be honest with oneself. The accuracy of one’s self-image improves over time, or doesn’t. Whichever is the case, this accuracy will determine how much one can rely on oneself, and how much of oneself one can allow to be seen. 

These two elements are only good if they line up; acceptability without accuracy leads to trouble, conversely accuracy without acceptability can lead to another kind of trouble. Each of these are subject to change, and either can throw one. The strength of each depends on a true reading of both, and that is where the third need comes in.

3)   One needs a sense of self that is verifiable. As a social animal, human beings depend on each other for lots of reasons. The foremost element of these, is the mirroring we provide each other. Sometimes, lifetimes are spent looking for accurate, unbiased, objective mirroring. Diversity can provide many viewpoints at once, all needed, to serve up an accurate take. But, the essential message of this need is that the social dimension of being human is a required aspect of forming an effective self.

Becoming fully human is a difficult task. I have learned it takes all of a human lifetime. I am grateful I have grown old enough to have a sense of this. I am also grateful, that I can now see, that I have always needed me, to fulfill my most essential needs. Life has always been risky, these needs, adequately fulfilled, give me the audacity to risk being myself on this journey.

I hope they serve you as well.

 

 

Three Kings

They came from who knows where. Out of the darkness, like royal beings appearing in the night, fully self-possessed, and yet searching. Beautiful and bizarre, they bring expectation, and the knowledge that something is happening. There is a presence about them. They bring promise, fortitude, and a steady gaze. And, they bring it all, into my living room each solstice season.

I’m referring, of course, to the Three Wisemen, known as the Magi. My only Christmas, and Christian, decoration of the season. I have been long influenced by them. And they make their long journey into my living room each year. They come, I think, to remind me, and to refresh my intention. Their journey, through the desert, echoes my own, through the wasteland of commerce and sentimentalism, that governs this time and place. With them, I’m keeping my eyes, and my heart, focused on the light that shines in the darkness.

I’ve been inspired by their tireless journey. By the constancy of their seeking.  I need to be encouraged to persist. There are days when it is hard for me to get-up and face reality. I drag myself to the next moment. It is not a pretty scene, but an all too familiar one. I’ve lost my sense of direction, and my will to move. Then they reappear, carrying the gift they don’t give away— the gift they are. The darkness, becomes once more, the desert I’m traveling through, as I follow the light.

This is the season of darkness. And, it is getting so dark. Everything wears a shadow, portending some coming reckoning. Life seems to have become some kind of enemy. The Earth hurtles toward the unknown. A darkening is upon us.

But the Magi follow the light, and see it brightening even this darkening era. I am heartened by their steadfast demeanor. I go too, with expectation, and the wisdom of the seasons. The light always returns, and ultimately prevails.

We are approaching the Solstice, the darkest time of the year. It is time to celebrate! It is hard to know which is more germane to the moment — the darkness, or the returning light. Both are enriching. Both carry us. The darkness is most feared, carrying as it does, the unknown depths, the aspirations we dare not utter. The light is another matter, brilliant with hope, and sometimes blinding us, overshadowing good sense. All of it so human. We welcome the light, honor the darkness, and cross our fingers. Each of them is so potent.

The three arrive just in time. Who knows what myth originated them, whether they are of totally Christian origin, or of some even more ancient people — because they embody some awed aspect of being human. There is a place in the human spirit where there is a constant trek through bleakness and waste, following a brilliant possibility. The Magi, in that sense, are real. They carry the rich gifts of our heritage. They are ancient activists —keeping the faith — following the best in us. They arrive during this intersection, when darkness and light converge.

Nobody knows what the New Year, the return of the seasons will bring. We are equally blinded — by the darkness, and the returning light. This year will be what it will be. The Magi search through the desert, through our empty culture, through our yearning hearts. Always seeking. Following what has heart, meaning, and possibility.

Let them find you, and I, this year. 

 

 

  

Inner Life

 

      Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination

                                                            Mary Oliver from The Wild Geese

 

There is one grace-filled aspect of aging, that I don’t think has been adequately acknowledged. I want to give it special attention. It is hard to do so, in this world that glorifies surfaces. What I want to focus on usually becomes most evident later on in life. Getting old means a growing awareness of an inner dimension. A shocking, often times slippery, movement in, sometimes adds to the confusion that sets in, when one ages. I believe this movement represents the penultimate development of later life, and is the thrust of ripening, that differentiates our species.

 

Inner life doesn’t manifest in the same way for everybody. It doesn’t manifest at all for some folks. Only the Mystery knows why. But, for others, it can be a revelation, a set of synchronistic events, a strange discomfort, a profoundly troublesome symptom, or an awkward knowing. There is a stirring that can happen at any moment, anywhere, inside or out, that one cannot hide from, and cannot easily appease. Something stirs and awakens, unbidden, and unlike what one might have been led to expect. Some seed of who one really is, germinates.

 

This is a birth that has taken a life-time to happen. This is the part of humanness that has been largely left to religion, because science can’t measure it. Something undefinable happens, a life-time takes on new meaning, and one is freshly revitalized. Old age becomes newly alive.

 

There is a lot of loneliness in later life. One of the hallmarks of this era is isolation. Old folks are left on the trail, to fend for themselves, to pass quietly. This neglect is horrific, but it does serve in one way. There is time to reflect — memory may be gone — but the stamp of existence remains. Reduced stimulation, and demand, enable the fruiting of the seed of inner life. Wrinkled, overwhelmed, and strangely happy, an old person stumbles toward the grave, having fulfilled some inexorable natural demand.

 

Inner life contains a kind of productivity that has been ignored by our materialistic culture. Assuming only that we are what we say we are, is a yoke we have placed on ourselves, thinking we are only valuable in economic terms. Our lives stretch out, beyond reproduction, beyond work viability, beyond even our assumptions about ourselves, to manifest the one capability that is our species alone. We are capable of becoming so much more! Alive in a more fulsome way!

  

Inner life reveals the real pregnancy we are. Partly formed, we are becoming! Becoming what, we don’t know, but the stirring within, the fact it happens later on in a human’s life, shows that something is coming. Something we cannot predict, but with appropriate attention, we can feel and experience. Life, as we know it, is a way-station, a means of moving on. 

 

Inner life can be fickle. Sometimes it is dark, cruel even — revealing what seems worst in us. What stirs is a Mystery. Sometimes unfeelable, something invisible changes everything. As seed carriers we don’t always know what we are carrying 

(or that we are carrying) for the world, but we are bringing forward something essential to the whole. It is an unacknowledged part of being human— a spiritual pregnancy— through which the future is unfolding. 

 

 

 

  

Flickering

I have a light, that when I enter the bathroom, and turn it on, flickers. I think that something similar is happening with me. I am flickering.  My flame has grown inconsistent. I am only sometimes what I have been. I’m still bright, but only occasionally. I’m not sure, I can always be bright when I want to be. Lately, I’ve begun flickering.

This is a new phenomenon for me. Oh sure, I’ve had my bad days. Those happen occasionally, but more rarely, than I am now flickering. I believe this is a sign of what is coming. I’m nearing my pull date.

Getting near the end, is the kind of near-death experience (NDE), that almost no one wants to talk about. I’m not sure why. I’ve been in this terrain before.  My stroke held me near death for a long time. It has been the most provocative learning experience of my life. Ah, but then, I didn’t know if I was going to die, this time, I’m more sure. I’m on my way out.

I’m OK with it. Not too afraid now. I’ve had a long time to reckon with death, I’ve come around to realizing that I have been dying all along. Over the years, I’ve given up so much. Death has been a constant companion. In fact, Death has made my life what it is — a miracle way beyond me. So, I kind of wait, with bated curiosity.

What I find difficult about it, is that we seldom talk about it. I don’t mean the conversations about the end, they are starting to happen now, in Cafe’s, and other public spaces, but the conversations I look forward to, are the ones about how Death changes Life. Death has been a friend, I’ve gotten to know.

It’s causing me to flicker now. I trust it, but I don’t know how best to respond to this form of reduction. I’d like to be with some others engaged in this part of living/dying. I wonder, what does flickering offer? I know I am moved to hold my loved ones more thoroughly. The world is more enchanting too, but is there something I’m missing? Perhaps, somebody else sees some other aspects of the light.

Flickering is sort of impolite. Our culture still admires the stiff denial of death. So, maybe that’s why the conversation is so rare, but from my viewpoint dying is as natural as living.

I’m flickering now. My days are numbered. The prelude is well underway. I am more alive than I have ever been, because the end is nearing. I am not consistently able to express it, but my happiness and awe are growing. I think I may be brighter when I am bright, and darker when I am dark. Both forms of light are accompanying me home.

I live now, without later being assured. It is tenuous, a moment by flickering moment proposition. I haven’t a leg to stand on. The world is a strange wisp, a dream that seems to be dreaming up the next bend in the river. Letting go isn’t totally in my hands now, but strangely I have to keep doing it anyway. That’s part of the nature of flickering. 

 

 

  

Learned Helplessness

I put two and two together this week— and surprised myself — by coming up with a sum I knew, but hadn’t really seen before. What I realized is, that I have been blinded — as in, made oblivious — to just how weighty and difficult some things are to faPce. I can’t see what isn’t supposed to be there. While blind, I can feel something.  I haven’t wanted to know, how utterly disabling growing up in this cultural milieu is. It’s like, the waters I’ve been swimming in, are more polluted than I thought. Furthermore, the pollution is paralyzing. Not in any obvious, visible way, but in a subtle, yet pressurized way.

It makes we humans less than we are.

I came upon this realization through the silent suffering of others. While investigating this silence, I got in touch with a dense field, that is permeating life. The best I’ve seen it described, is through the words of Martin Seligman, who calls it, learned helplessness. He is talking about a state, that results from exposure to pervasive abuse. My formulation, is exposure to pervasive socialization.

Some of us are disabled, by the realities we’ve been subjected too. We have both an inaccurate self-image, and an inaccurate picture of what is.

Each of us has been skewed — deformed by a constant barrage of aberrant interactions. Others, especially those closest and most important to us, have inadvertently been passing on to us, the latest and most significant prejudices. I don’t mean racial prejudices — although those are included — I mean about what is real, and worth responding to, and what is not. This includes the pressure to conform. All of this subtle force is often called love.

Remember, don’t color outside the lines.

It is so hard to find words for some things. That is because some things exist beyond the lines, some things are not only taboo, but unacknowledgeable. The totality of who we are, is beyond the recognition of the world we live in.

Find words for that!

Silence can be deafening. The unspoken often conveys what words will not allow. And, worse yet, silence can reveal the mute disability of learned helplessness — the silent cry of the unacknowledged. It is painful to be in the presence of this kind of silence. Agonizing to be in the presence of swallowed lies. Lies that are passed on so easily, and become new generations of deformed people.

When we fight to free ourselves of conditioning, like some old people do, we are fighting the constant flow of cultural propaganda. Not a political manipulation — but a very human desire to provide protection, and guidance, in a mysterious and dangerous world. We are held down, zeitgeist-wrapped, to give us a leg up, in a world that is really beyond our control. It is loving, and it is disabling.

Going beyond conditioning is a way of freeing oneself from bondage, learned helplessness, and over-zealous love. To be oneself, a unique being, is to go beyond — to quiver in the unknown — and to be more than what is called for. It is a courageous act. An act that is anything but helpless. 

 

  

Community Caregiving

 

“The immediate genius of generosity is that it draws us out of ourselves.”

                                                                                                                                                                                              Wendy Lustbader

I didn’t see the subject of this Slow Lane coming. I have no idea of what I’m going to write. I only know that the title set-off some kind of reverberation that has galvanized me to sit down and see what comes.

I only thought of caregiving as exclusively personal. I’ve had caregivers for almost 17 years now. I’ve been grateful, vulnerable, ashamed, and astonished by the care I’ve received, but I never thought about it in collective terms before, never conceived of caregiving in any collective way— except I have. Without knowing, or even noticing, I’ve been creating and supporting group activity, always intent upon helping a group become a ceremonial ground, a place where one can discover, and be, fully human.

Now, for the first time, I’m realizing that I am a community caregiver. Perhaps, many of us are. I hope many more will be. By labelling these efforts as community caregiving they become visible, and can be valued again.  Caregiving, in general, has been undervalued in this society. It is work that has been left to the underclasses, and the marginalized. It is as if heartbreak, illness, disability, and pain are a unwelcome part of our humanity.

As one of the old, I know that these qualities, as hard as they are, deepen our humanity, and tend to bring out what is most special about our species. Caring then becomes something else. It is supporting the futherment of human evolution, particularly of the heart. A caregiver is love manifest. A mid-wife at the door of Creation.

A community caregiver is someone who is sensitive to the tides of our larger connection. Not just the social dimension of who we are, but the entire ocean of our cosmological togetherness. Those of us gifted with this kind of awareness are moved by tidal forces to create celebratory events which make more explicit the ties of love that bind us, and make being human so poignant.. In any moment a social caregiver can be switched on, and does their best to attract and pull together a cluster of humans.

I didn’t consciously know I was one of them. I thought of myself as a caregiver, a man touched by hopeless courage, bound to what is deeply broken, but because I have lived in this fractoring culture, I never thought of myself as in service to any collective. I’ve been enlightened. There is something so big, that it calls us all in different ways, and some of us have to serve it.

Community, I think, provides an intermediate playground. It is large enough to be the something palpably larger, that it provides a glimpse, of the even larger wholeness we owe ourselves to. In this age, caregiving is gratitude personalized. Community caregiving is the Universe doing self-care.

I suspect, that the luck that steadily comes my way, is somehow related to the quality of community caregiving I do. The gift increases when it is given away. The Universe thrives and expands because caring does. 

 

 

 

Lucky

 The Slow Lane

I’m coming up on the 20^th anniversary of my stroke, and it occurred to me, to use the story about becoming Lucky to celebrate. That’s right to celebrate! You see the stroke has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I have told pieces of the story of why, but never the whole story, and now I think is the time. I intend to only briefly touch on the medical hell I went through, because the details of my particular situation, though plenty traumatic, are not really that germane to the story. I’m not Lucky because I survived, I’m Lucky because the experience transformed me. Here’s what I mean.

When I was 55 I had a hemorrhagic stroke, a blood vessel in my brain leaked. That altered everything. A few months later, after brain surgery, I developed a very rare brain condition, that set me on an unknown course of losing functioning on a regular basis. All of this (all that losing), led to the loss of my marriage, family, home, property, career, health and well-being. It was an immediately dark time in my life. Literally, my life had been turned into rubble. For much of the first few years I was dazed, angry, and full of grief. I had no idea what hit me —but I knew my life, as I knew it — was over.

Eventually, I lived alone, my marriage ended, I became disabled, and it looked like I was dying. My doctor scared me, by saying that medicine didn’t know what was wrong with me, and couldn’t treat me. I was freaked out, and freed to try other means of treatment. Nothing made a difference. After years of trying things, I ran out of resources, and resigned myself to dying. I remember, living for 3 years as a terminal patient (with a 24-hour planning horizon) and a sense that everything was over.

The transformation began so innocuously, that I had no idea it had begun. All evidence suggested that I was dying. So, what arose in me was a set of regrets. I didn’t want to go to my grave with what I knew. After a poignant and painful dream, where my house was boarded up, and closed, I realized I couldn’t stand not sharing with someone what I had learned about community. So, I started writing, using only two good fingers on the keyboard. I did it, slowly, to exorcise my regrets, knowing I might die soon, only to have, stuff that I didn’t know come out.

Whereas, I started, thinking I knew what I had to write, I wrote what I didn’t know I knew. I learned so much from myself, that I felt compelled to keep going. All that time, I was discovering, that within me, was a life, that I had no inkling of. In the process, David became Lucky. I didn’t know it yet. It was several years before I recognized the changes that had been wrought. But, there as I lay, unable to move, near the abyss, Life moved into me, and I was re-made.

Lucky was born of what was left of the man. It was through no intention.  I was nothing but a failed carcass. What arose from that piece of meat was someone that was Life’s alone. Unbeknownst to me— an operation by ‘invisible hands’ — was being performed. I’m still waking up to that procedure.  But, some unknown presence settled in, and set me on a new course.

Emotional intelligence grew, connection with the cosmos became more vivid, compassion took on a deeper hue, foolishness and play flourished, and I grew into a more internally free being. I knew my relations. I was delivered a decisive blow, dealt a disabling wisdom, mentored by mystery, and captivated by Life. Paradox became a friend. Lucky emerged as mystified rubble, doomed and freed by hardship.

Now I marvel in the world around me. Certainty has fled, and I know the real vulnerability of being human. Grief and praise have intertwined into awe. I wheel around amazed, overwhelmed, and grateful that I have lasted long enough to get here. I know the Universe is my truest parent and that I’m wanted.

Forgive my weirdness, after all, I’m a little demented — surrounded drunkenly by all of this magnificent wonder and hellish mistrust.

 

 

 

  

Ikegai & Moai

“It is good for we elders to be up to something,

                                                especially if it is with others.”                                                                                                   

                                                                                                          David “Lucky” Goff 

People are getting old all around the planet. Recent researchers have noticed. One looked at places and cultures (called Blue Zones) where there is a much higher percentage of the elder population than occurs here in America. In a number of places, there are 3 to 6 times as many centenarians (people over 100 years old) as in this country.

Cross-cultural studies have revealed that there are certain commonalities in these societies (diet, movement, spirituality, cultural respect), that may account for their longer, richer lives. Below, I address two social dimensions of longevity, which the people of Okinawa have given words to. There is a richness of wisdom, born of longevity and community, infused into these words. And so, I introduce you to the Japanese words, Ikegai and Moai.

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Ikegai (pronounced: icky-guy)

This word has traditionally referred, in Japan, to “having a life of meaning.” In Okinawa it took on a more particular meaning. There it refers to the importance of having “a life of purpose.” It appears that longer, higher quality lives, center around an experience of living purposely — hold on, because this is the social part — not just for yourself, but for others.

A good, long life, one filled with joy, and a desire to get out of bed in the morning, is one spent purposely acting to enhance life for everyone. Having a way to do it, that is direct, experiential, and not abstract is optimal. This is Ikegai.

The interactive nature of life holds a special kind of medicine that benefits all involved. The synergy of this invisible substance feeds and enhances life, giving energy to people, and increasing their health and longevity. This mutually beneficial way of interacting is known and practiced in some places. We can learn from the way of life that prevails in these places. Ikegai reflects a special human awareness, that can be translated into anyone’s life. It is part of the human repertoire, that aging activates, and that each of us can adopt, for our own and each other’s benefit.

Moai (pronounced: like the Missourri river, the big Mo-eye)

What distinguishes many of the places where longer life prevails is a kind of social embeddedness. In Okinawa, the pople realize this, in fact, cultivate it, by forming small groups (8 to 12 people), Moai, that just hang-out together. These are not activist or political groups, clubs — or groups that have any particular agenda. They are just designed to enrich social life, and to ward-off feelings of loneliness and disconnection.

Moai represent an unexpressed sensibility that pervades cultures where people live longer, more satisfied lives. Regular interaction satisfies something basic, in we  social animals. This is a kind of community important to well-being — because it embodies the spiritual need to be part of something larger. Some sense of social connectedness replicates community — the intermediary between individual humans and the Universe. In short, we need each other to fulfill our lives.

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We live in a rapidly changing world. It seems to be descending into a new level of chaos. In this dangerous time, it is good to look to some of the cultural practices of our kind, to help us navigate, and make the best of, the treacherous waters we now live in. Human have known, and embodied, miracles in the past. These words, show something of the social nature of those miracles. Armed with each other, we are as capable as ever.

 

 

  

Full Catastrophe Living

There is a line from one of my favorite poems that goes like this, “Whatever can be lost, will be.” This is what happened in Lahaina, and it is what’s happening to each of us, as we get older. The reduction, that is, the destruction of everything in Lahaina, Maui, is what is releasing the gestalt of strength, that is permeating and bringing together that community. It is heartening to know that kind of feeling, a kind of other-worldly strength, is a way human’s respond to shared devastation. The more thorough the loss, the more thorough the gain. Out of misery arises a joining spirit.

The atmosphere of strength, the shared regard for life, the overall vulnerability that permeates the people, is a natural reaction to what has happened. It is an arising of what is underneath all of us.  It holds promise for we who are ageing into the sunset. Life is slowly creating a Lahaina, a thorough-going disaster, that will generate new life.

Humans come into life with nothing, and they go out the same. But, unbeknownst to most of us, the mysterious feeling of connection, which underlies all things, arises, like it is doing in Lahaina, and brings us into its bosom. Losing everything, health and well-being, is a prelude. The rattling, anxiety-producing elements of Life, all have to do with accumulation and holding on, they inevitably lead to the anguish of letting go. Lightening up seems like a tragic loss, but it is actually a normal, natural, balancing of the scales. Inside the dark misery of loss resides a gain that is unimagined, and unanticipated.

Older folks are slowly being stripped. Time is taking everything. Doddering and falling are signs of what is occurring. Giving up and letting go, can be a wrestling match, a very sad and painful form of death march, a way we human’s try to resist the inevitable. And with each iota of loosening grip— a falling away from the conventional struggle our culture so prizes — comes a dawning awareness of the balm of renewed connection. 

To have the being you want to be, you have to let go of the being you are. It is painfully obvious. All birth comes with birth pains. The wrinkled, and gray amongst us, are past the event horizon, and are being dragged into what many consider a black hole, but instead it is the net of Indra. We are being devastated, our means of living is dissolving, we are fading into oblivion, only to find what does not change, the holding environment of Creation.

To live a full life, to care about what matters to each of us, and to meet such an ignominious ending, is hard to take — not at all what we wanted our lives to add up to. It is a bad way for the book to end. It can leave an unsavory taste in our mouths, even before we get there.

Did what put a spark in your mother’s womb really opt for this?

No!

If your life is falling apart, congratulate yourself!  Some new, more hospitable, Lahaina awaits you. 

 

 

  

Scarred Heart

“Oh People.

Look among you,

it’s there, 

your hope must lie.”

                                                                                                     Rock Me On the Water by Jackson Browne

Surviving in a world that has increasingly become more inhospitable is challenging. Thriving in this same world is miraculous. Strangely, the trick is not really a trick, it is form of heartbreak. Persistent heartbreak. The scarred heart is the one that has been broken over and over by the disappointment that attends loving. This is not a paean to the wonder of the heart’s ability to love, it is recognition of the heart’s resilience. There is strength in the rising repair of great loss. This strength becomes an asset, a kind of power, when it is applied against what seem to be the odds. It is the strength behind any proclamation that claims to be “          STRONG.”

This strength isn’t a matter of will. Maui isn’t going to become more because the citizens intend it. Something else, much more mysterious and miraculous is underway. And painfully, all the destruction unleashed it. A scar upon the heart of Lahaina is forming. It is a product of a quality of the heart that is all too unrecognized. The heart has the ability to heal and enlarge itself. Not from merely breaking, but from returning to the source of heartbreak again and again. This isn’t about co-dependent suffering that needs to stop, it’s about the disaster of living.

There is some existential force that waits within us. It has an unfathomable magnitude. When enough of us are reduced by circumstance, usually by natural disaster, sometimes by human terrorism or accident, then this force arises within those who have been laid low. It is some primal aspect of the human heart. It suffuses those who have been viscerally touched, who identify with the true vulnerability of being human, who know their own perishability. An unpredicted power arises that binds individuals into something greater, a being-ness that encompasses and embraces. It is a collective experienced as “we,” but really is more alien than that, it is “us,” but beyond us. Some people refer to it as a field,  referring to some kind of energy, some call it communitas, a state of consciousness that arises with enough loss, but I think it is the way of hearts, at the deepest, un-feelable level, hearts that are linked. Being human has some kind of cosmic linkage which can only be seen and felt under the rarest of circumstances.

Disaster brings out the best of us. Have you ever wondered why? Because it reduces everyone to a level of nothingness that allows for the humble embrace of what is, and the ability to identify with anyone’s feelings. Equality is rampant amongst the dispossessed. Strangely this strength, this unity, this belongingness, lies at the center of loss. To get to where we are all connected, is to renounce all your unique strengths (not completely), in favor of what makes one most human. Going to this place, even inadequately, and incompletely, serves the heart, scarring it with loss, and helping it strengthen for the future.

The Phoenix that arises from the ashes, comes from another place. It is a place that seems magically connected to this one. It isn’t magic that sets the Phoenix free, but the humbleness of emptiness, the reductions of Life, the will to be broken. The Phoenix rises from what remains.

The scarred heart isn’t just a collective phenomenon. Each of us is endowed with the powers of the Universe. Resilience is a sign of Life. It is in each of us. The Phoenix will come through you, if you go down far enough. Do that with others — so that we go out in a blaze of glory — a Phoenix inexplicably rises. 

 

 

  

The Waiting Room

The proximity of death grows closer with each year, bringing a new perspective and a freshened sense of one’s axis shifting. Aging brings surprises — some wrapped in darkness, some in penetrating light. Each reveals. I have more pain and more clarity. I know I am more firmly ensconced in ‘the waiting room,’ hanging around for the final act.

Learning to wait has been illuminating. I had the illusion that I grasped death, but learned that each time I have a more vivid experience of it, I am introduced to a little more of its inscrutable nature. I’ve had my near-death experience, but this year’s birthday depression and a bout of chronic pain, made clear the uselessness of my life, and the emptiness of my efforts.

I discovered I don’t really exist because of what I do. For me, dying, this time around, made it really clear to me, that changing the trajectory of cultural life, of trying to make a difference, is not why I exist. These are not my accomplishhments, and it wouldn’t matter if they were. I am here not to satisfy, or meet, any criteria. The waiting room, enduring with the constant vulnerability of death, is about existing at a basic stripped-down level. I am not here to do anything.

To wait well is like active listening. Something inside is poised, like a cat about to strike. The chime of final freedom is about to go off, but it isn’t time yet. Waiting is a suspended movement, somewhere mid-way. Focused upon the inevitable, but not there yet. This is a state all its own. And, it goes on as long as it goes on. Enduring the formless, the obsolescence of identity, the substantial weightlessness, of being a non-being, is extremely corrosive and freeing. There is nothing but the moment.

A kind of radical dementia is altering everything. Focusing attention upon the moment, breaking the remaining bonds with what was, or what one thought one was doing, in favor of an awareness of what is unfolding. An opening is occurring, it isn’t a portal to another world, instead it is an aperture that reveals the current one like never before.

Waiting is like the beginning of a hallucinogenic experience. The world is slowly softening up. Things are flowing into each other. One’s sense of perspective becomes more fluid, taking on a disorienting depth, and effecting one’s sense of balance. Maintaining any sense of poise inside such an overwhelming experience is useless.

I don’t know how long I’ve dwelled here, I didn’t notice when I came. I think I have been in and out. Now it seems to be a feature of this part of my life, enhancing things and providing a mostly ambivalent clarity. I’m ready to move on, and I’m not ready at all. The waiting room is a mostly invisible landscape that haunts, besieges and reminds. I am not really alive without it, but hardly alive with it.

The waiting room gives me a place to ponder my existence, to view the scales, to feel the weight of eternity, to grapple with the essential mystery. Now, this seems like a blessing, a chance to sum up the whole. I can see the holes, the places and people, I didn’t give enough of the right kind of attention, and I can feel the burn of loss, knowing the chances will not come again, but also knowing that these recollections have timeless meaning.

I no longer have aspirations, or yardsticks to measure me by; the time of goals is past, now I think I am shorn of pretense. In essence, I am more relaxed, more present and available. This is the time when I am ripe, alive, and perhaps most nutritious. It is the time when I am here, but not for long. This is the time when I can offer the greatest perspective, and the most wisdom, as it is a time when knowing isn’t as emphasized as uncertainty.

It seems possible that the waiting room is holding me, while I discover there is even more to me than I imagined. The transcendent being, who is me, gradually comes, more and more, into awareness. I am not I, instead I am a gradually discernable placeholder, a facet of the Universe that is celebrating another expansion. I — no longer expresses what this being is experiencing. The waiting room just might be the final incubator, the place where a kind of invisible and effortless transformation prepares the way for a more profound change.  

Differing

“Our destination is to stand face to face,

feeling the space around us,

feeling our own powerful and unencumbered vitality, 

so that we have some chance of not being eternally alone;

 but different enough from us 

that we can never imagine him or her to be merely a part of us.

We will discover the Other to be someone familiar and someone forever new."

                                                                                                                                                                                  • Guy Napier

“…two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.”

                                                                                                                                                    Rilke

Being different is relatively easy for me. I was thrown in the deep-end right from the beginning. I was a military brat. I used to say that “every time I was about to become somebody,a a aa we’d move.” A life that included an advanced degreWe, 30 years of psychotherapy, a stroke, an impossible initiation, disability, old age, brain damage, and a passion for elder life, pretty much insuMred that I have gotten to experience being different quite a lot. It’s kind of run-of-the-mill for me now.  But, being different presents another challenge; I am having a dramatically larger difficulty around differing.

Differing requires me to show myself, to sometimes interrupt the narrative of the moment, to be alone, to reveal complexity, to become momentarily the object of attention. It is like walking before a firing squad. One doesn’t know whether an execution is going to happen or not.

All too often some form of de-humanization does. People generally don’t take kindly to the disruption that otherness causes. Worse yet, being different usually gets blamed for any discomfort that occurs. So, living out a difference is more dangerous than passively being different. This has caused a painful conundrum in my life. One that has inhibited and strengthen me.

Differing well requires one to care for oneself. Removing the conventional mask, and revealing the more genuine is hard enough, but having to go further, and reveal the way you differ, is a courageous and necessary act. It requires love of self, diversity, and what is. This kind of move enriches relationship, and sometimes throws it into a spin. Every generous act of truth-revealing, is one that can be painful. Sometimes honest differing generates real suffering. Sometimes honest differing leads to genuine connection.

There lies the rub. Intimacy cannot really exist, without differing, without revealing what may not be acceptable. For the old person, in particular, with each day driving one deeper and deeper into uniqueness, becoming more and more different, the dilemma of differing, grows more challenging. Aging means becoming more different. So, naturally it requires more self-regard.

It is hard to muster what is needed by some circumstances. Life is full of ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’ situations. This is another one. Differing has that quality in it. It is one of Life’s many gifts, the opportunity to grow oneself, any relationship one is in, and the expansive profusion of Life. All you have to do is be as different as you are. And, be willing to experience the consequences.

 

 

 

  

Playfulness

“Man only plays —

when he is in the fullest sense of the word —

 a human being,

and he is only fully a human being —

 when he plays.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Friedrich Schiller

I re-discovered play when a friend of mine became Dr. Fun. He was an internet personality for years, and someone I walked with every Friday during the nineties. Later, when I had a radio show on KOWS, he was a guest. He had a barn full of games, and was a delight to be around. His laugh and his me/we attitude were infectious. He knew play was a wonderful way to encounter the world. He’s gone now, but for years, he helped me lighten up, and become aware of how important something like play, which is seen as frivolous, held a key to human evolution. This essay is a homage to him, and an affirmation of the role of play in the development of happy, healthy, and engaged elders.

Dr. Fun intuited what Dr. Peter Gray later discovered around play, when he found that hunter-gatherer societies, across the globe, organized theirocial lives around play. They learned how to share, how to communicate, how to value each other, and their existence, through playing together. This evolutionary psychologist could see that mammals played from childhood into adulthood as a way of becoming proficient at being the kind of beings they are. It was a form of instinctive actualization. More importantly, he could see, that humans became most human, when they had an adequate chance to actively play with each other. He focused upon childhood, which leaves it to me, to broadcast through these words, that play holds a form of social elixir that can make an old person alive and expectant. The joy of childhood innocence can, through elder play, be transformed into joy in old age.

As I have grown older I adopted play more and more. Soon it was evident to me that an attitude of play made my day a fun project, more creative, imaginative and delightful. Of course, the days of a house-bound disabled person always hold difficult challenges, but I learned, that as I looked to each challenge like a piece of new playground equipment on the playground of Life, I began to look more expectantly at my days. What a pleasant revelation! Now I find myself cultivating more fun, to go along with all the other attributes of getting older.

All of this unexpected joy makes me wonder, I’ve been led to believe that perhaps the best use of my awareness was to develop mindfulness. As a therapist, and a transpersonalist, I was taught that things go much better with mindfulness. I believe it, and until now, where I’m re-discovering play, I always thought it was the best way to cultivate presence. But now, I’m not so certain. Time, and experience, have made me think again, and you can see from the little table below, that I am not as convinced as I once was.

Playfulness and Mindfulness 

Mindfulness   • goal oriented. (calming the mind) • private • controlled (regulate and monitor breathing) • dis-engaged  • inner directed • most prominent era:  adulthood

Playfulness   • non-goal oriented (discovery) • interactive • spontaneous • engaged • inner and outer directed • most prominent eras: Childhood   (original innocence), elderhood (emancipated innocence)

Maybe, this is a specific age-development, one that just magnifies the return of innocence that comes with old age, but I don’t think so, mindfulness came out of monasteries and meditation, whereas playfulness comes right from engagement. Both have value, I just wish I‘d have had as much emphasis on play, as I had on the benefits of mindfulness. I think I might have enjoyed my life more — like I do now.

Play has come as a great surprise! It has restored my sense of pleasure in life. It has got me looking forward to the day — and especially new encounters (they provide new playground equipment). Life is now full of interesting puzzles, spontaneous joy, new playmates, and excellent fun. I’m relishing these later years, and delighted I’ve developed an antidote for the rampant depression that haunts old age. Engaging is much more fun than the meditation pillow.

 

 

  

Wyrd Aging

When I was a kid, coloring outside the lines was heavily discouraged. Later, wandering away from one’s career track was similarly ill-advised. Marriage and family were de rigour. There was a track one followed throughout, what was considered, a good life. Happily, things are a little more fluid now, but it is still somewhat dangerous to go too far off the beaten path. Maintaining some conventional cred is still important.

As a marriage counselor I saw how much pain and effort went into staying out of the anxiety-provoking weeds. Some semblance of the norm was important. Even the miscreants knew the pledge of allegiance. 

Weighing heavily upon most everyone was an unconscious cultural weight. There was a kind of reliable sense of reality that shaped most of our possibilities and identities. The cookie cutter ruled our lives, and few of us even noticed. Early human life is about fitting in, people are willing to bear the consequences, rather than face ridicule, disbarment, censure, and worse yet, being caste out.

Today, we still argue about reality, our politics center upon a fight over what is real, and therefore acceptable. Society seems to be unraveling because the center doesn’t hold, as it once did. It is a hard time to be passing from conventional to non-conventional. Astonishingly, life in the weeds, beyond the norms, way beyond the favored cultural assumptions of the day, lies the terrain of the unknown, the home of today’s elder. Political polarization is lightweight, in comparison to the disruptions that come with aging. Life, and old age in particular, turn out to be the really unsettling immigrant.

The nature of reality is no longer an ideological argument, for the old person, it is more of a slow-motion race with uncertainty. Falling carries the day. Old ideas of reality, family, love, identity, physical well-being, and what one is doing here, give way. The weeds, the unsettling tensions, the thoughts that have always been unthinkable, the lost opportunities, now become the coin of the realm. Even a new form of wealth emerges.

Too often, these changes, the shift from cultural assumptions to more non-conventional concerns, are treated like something is wrong, rather than like something is right. Old people aren’t breaking down, they are breaking out. The human imagination has been straight-jacketed by pathological thinking for too long. It is time for something a little freer, like the weeds that keep breaking out everywhere Life finds a spot, that isn’t so well-cult-ivated.

Old age is such an occurrence. It is a time meant to be more on the Jwild side. Getting grey and wrinkled, needing others, going more slowly, gazing at the cosmos within — these are signs — that show there is a more natural maturity available to us, then our conventions are willing to admit. The truly demented are the ones not enough fixated on the moment, and who cannot see, that Life is changing, as it always does.

We are living in a world that is constantly changing — defying our expectations. Aging leads us into an innocent weed patch, from which one can experience more of those glorious disruptions.

This is a part of being human that is much needed now.

 

 

  

Desperate Play

There is a quiet, simple joy that comes with knowing that within us there is an antidote to all ailments. I know, that sounds like a preposterous assertion. But, think about it for a moment. Plausibly, the Universe has created a balancing agent, that restores equanimity, and encourages creativity (expansion) to go on, impervious to the slings and arrows of Life. Like everything else, we are composed of the stuff of the Universe, and thus contain within us, the power to go beyond where we have been before, and actualize wholeness wherever we are.

I forget what I know, much more often than I remember. I guess the compelling nature of human life baffles me just enough that I get distracted. I begin to believe this is all there is. In this kind of delusional moment, I forget where I’m from, and where I’ve always been. My earthly endeavors begin to take on a gravity of their own, and I fall sway to a weight that goes with the illusion. I lose some perspective while taking on another vantage point. Then, I am susceptible. I think I am bounded by the gravitational pull of the conventions of this time and place.

I labor under the weight of this place’s expectations. I get torn by the feelings that I am supposed to be one kind of man, while I am another. I now have an invisible disability that exacerbates the ones that can be seen. All of this adds weight, enhances the pull of gravity, and compresses my attitude, leaving me a lump of human protoplasm distorted and quivering. It isn’t fun to be so burdened. Worse yet, it isn’t even near the best I can do. I suffer from the potential I seldom get to use.

Firmly, under the sway of earthly and societal delusion, I trudge through life, like a good soldier, or a good cog in the system, forgetting what is within me. I even have trouble admitting to myself that I might be depressed. All I can muster is a metaphor of journeying through an arid landscape. I have begun to despair. The larger life that had really spawned me, has been reduced into a desiccated incoherent lump. I am thoroughly human, a victim of existence, a forgotten spark of the primeval light.

I am desperate. I know I am here because there is more to the story. I just don’t remember what. There are lots of stories. Divinity, if you believed everything said, is everywhere. But re-experiencing it is another matter. Stories, even the genuine experiences of others, don’t help. My desperation, is not for an uplifting story, its for a visceral unfolding. I want to be part of the flow.

Desperation, the emptiness of some aspects of life, has driven me back. I am turning once more to an old friend of mine. Oddly, this old friend is me. In some form of youthful instinctiveness, the old childish me used to perform powerful rituals by merely playing. I think I became human, the Divine child taking form, through play.

I had to get thoroughly lost to find myself. It took years. Now, I’m coming to a new place. I am once again lost at sea, bobbing in the great ocean. But now, I’m scarred, I’ve worn the rigid mantle, become the quintessential, followed the herd, felt the blistering of aloneness, and become old. Play frees me from the predictable me. I get to be what I don’t know. I am becoming again, only this time, there is no one, but myself, to guide me. I don’t have to to make sure I stay between the lines, be scored against anyone, or told what to do. When I begin to think of the things that assail me, like strange playground equipment, I get excited not depressed. Challenges are opportunities. Life looks and feels different.

Suddenly, falling and failing, has a new complexion. I’m beginning to have a more satisfied attitude. One that looks forward to what the day brings. I haven’t fully integrated this new/old awareness or attitude yet. I’m still in the phase of not completely believing it. Play is altering the way I’m encountering things now, and I’m enthralled with the experiential learning that it is provoking.

Maybe the aridity of some facets of my life drove me to re-discover what I already knew. I’m Lucky, that could be possible. But, I think that play is an aspect of the creativity of the Universe — that is within each and every one of us.

Play with that idea for a while.

 

  

Oasis Moments

The bleakness can be overwhelming. Life can be like trudging through a dessert. Out beyond hope is an endless procession of dull and almost lifeless moments. One keeps moving, because, that is all one knows how to do, because, the life-force keeps beating one’s heart, because, some animal part of one’s organism refuses to stop. Soon one’s internal landscape is as arid as the place one occupies.

The journey through life sometimes means going through these kinds of badlands. They zap and tax one’s soul. Without this kind of darkness, the garden contains nothing resembling light. Through some kind of other-worldly alchemy the darkness and light are linked, and bleak aridity coexists with the profusion of life. It is one of the glorious hardships of life. Poverty insures some forms of wealth. As does wealth insure some forms of poverty. The flow is paradoxical, blowing all means of cover. No one seems to know why we humans are party to this kind of sometimes macabre, always miraculous, dance form.

Anyway, this Slow Lane is not really about this form of the miraculousness of life, Rather, it is about how the rains sometimes come to the dessert unexpectedly. There are, what I call, oasis moments. Times when the waters of life fall from the heavens. Periods where everything glistens — and blessing permeates and refreshes the air. Such moments renew, and lend hope to hopeless endeavors.

The metaphors of miraculous and Divine intervention shine in most of our memories. The parting of the Red Sea, the locusts saving the Mormons, the coming of the just-in-time, the release of Nelson Mandela. These moments bear the stamp of the miraculous, but they are so big, so historical, that they threaten to eclipse the moments of such grace in our regular salt of the earth lives.

I don’t know about you, and your life, but I have danced in the rain of unexpected and surprising help. My pedestrian, unremarkable life has stumbled upon eras of grace, little times when someone has opened their heart, or their mind, and given me the boosting benefit of the doubt. Irrationality happens — in a good way. Unbelievably, the Sun shines with new energy.

I don’t know how this happens, but somehow it does — old lovers find each other, the desperately broken are sheltered, the abandoned are embraced, the hopeless cause discovers another carrying shoulder — and wEEE all carry on, despite the darkness. Oasis moments come right out of the darkness. How does that happen? What does it mean?

It isn’t given to we humans to know. But, we sometimes benefit anyway. I suppose I’m writing this because I have noticed. I can’t explain what has shaken my cynicism. I know I’ve done too little, to deserve such moments, and they sometimes come anyway.

This community is one for me. I have someplace to go with my wonder. It is a gift that goes way beyond whatever I thought I was cultivating. An oasis sprang up to meet my cry. Each of you is a component of someone’s oasis, mine for sure, but likely someone you may not even know. The oasis moment is us. How remarkable, and how perfect!