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.
No comments:
Post a Comment