Crumple Zone

A few days ago my honey was in a car wreck. Luckily, she was unhurt. Her car was totaled. The accident, her reaction to it, and the response of her community, all revealed to me a lot about resilience that I want to pass on in this piece. There is nothing like the care that was present at all of these levels. The world hurts from the absence of this kind of caring, and is far less hospitable and resilient, because humans are so caught up in the wrong kind of pursuits. I was amazed to see how much emotional connection and maturity make a difference. I saw an accident that would have knocked most people out of the box, that would throw a blanket on their best laid plans, and this would-be trauma, instead became an affirmation of the importance of emotional connection.

Car manufacturers have grown a great deal more safety conscious over the recent years. They have gone so far, as to have engineered vehicle designs that include features that protect occupants. This has aided drivers and passengers enormously. No doubt, this kind of planning made a real difference in the situation of my sweetie. The car crumpled in a designed way, the airbags deployed, and she walked away, a 75 year-old woman intact, and only shaken. Her story could have been defined (for days) by the accident, but instead, it has been determined by her reaction, and the response of those she is connected with. The crumple zone was extended by a lot of grown-up hearts.

The car behaved fabulously. It is wrecked, but it converted the energy of collision into twisted metal, rather than mangled flesh. Even as it passed into a useless form it performed well. It is fair to say it did what it is supposed to do; it gave its life for my honey. I am extremely grateful to all who have made this a reality. She survived the wreck because of the car’s design, but she grew through the aftermath, because of resilience built into human connection.

She had a bigger part in what played out than just being the passive victim of an accident. As a result of her age, and especially her maturity, she was able to complete her intended journey despite the surprise collision. As she put it, her intended life was more important than any “drama” (by that I think she means, emotional reaction) that the accident produced. She had the internal wherewithal to focus upon her desire, rather than be subject to the emotional shock that such a circumstance was likely to arouse. She held herself together, and overcame what could have been a messy loss of equanimity, by relying on her desire, and savvy about herself. In other words, she could have fallen a part, after a circumstance that would have warranted it, but didn’t, because she didn’t have to. She was solid enough to be who she wanted to be. She had her own crumple zone.

Aiding her was her community. Another level of the crumple zone that protected her, were the relationships that surrounded her. In this case, she was connected with folks that were concerned about her — and knew her well enough — to let her define her own experience; no one freaked out, they merely supported her. This allowed an unfortunate collision to become a binding agent that served her and her loved ones. The accident had a dual role, it affirmed her self-solidity, and increased the bonds that defined her community. She felt cared for in a very personal and specific way, and those that cared, got to be involved. A destabilizing event turned into a resilient collective response. Connection not only held, but was confirmed by misfortune.

As a community-builder, as someone who regularly praises the role of caring, it is heartening to experience just how much resilience lies in our responses to each other during the misfortunes of life. I know, that this relatively painless event, has been only relatively painless, because of the quality of caring that it entailed. My sweetie’s self-love was important, and that was abetted by the love of those involved.  This event is some of the best evidence that the ties that matter, exist primarily in the heart.

The auto companies can’t engineer that, no city or neighborhood can either, because the crumple zone is only as capable of handling shock as we the people are. We need each other. (Today, and most likely, in the future.)  The only way to insure this protection, is through growing — our hearts, spirits, and most importantly, our emotional connections with one another.

Wonder

Like Mystery, everything seems to be shot through with wonder! The spaciousness that flows from these places, within all parts of reality, leaves me breathless. I am disturbed, by living within so much magnificent mystery. Because this is so, I’m finding it harder and harder to think and comment about anything. Probability seems to dictate that no matter how I look, or which way my attention is drawn, I behold a certain amount of wondrous uncertainty. Its all so much, so mysteriously undetermined, while being solid, that I wonder if I can even sensibly write about it.

Reflecting, as I am, on this aspect of my experience, and trying to find words for it, is, no doubt, part of the foolishness I was born with. Somehow, without any intention on my part, I’ve become aware of something so thoroughly palpable because it isn’t there. I mean, rather crazily I’m sure, that what isn’t there is what seems to accompany what is. And, even more strangely, gives it shape, dimension and meaning.

I was never prepared for this kind of perception. And it seems, that uttering anything about it is hopeless. Still, I keep thinking that there should be someway to talk about it. There seems to be something about reality that contains a probabilistic something that keeps everything connected and free. How is that possible! I don’t know, but I have noticed. The perception thrills me, and it leaves me befuddled. I can’t adequately articulate this aspect of my reality, yet it is so awesome I can’t ignore it either. I feel compelled to share it, and at the same time, I am aware that I am not really able to describe it.

So, what am I talking about? I can’t really say. I am trying not to use, over and over again, the words mystery, uncertainty, wonder and unknown. They need a rest, and only dimly refer to what vibrates in the background. I want to convey, and hear other’s perceptions about, this quick-silver facet of each moment, because somehow sharing such befuddlement is deeply reassuring. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here, noticing the wonder that keeps my heart beating.

Anyway, it seems like, in my dottage, this awareness has come on stronger than any past point of my life. I have a mixed reaction to this awareness. I love it. It seems so freeing. I have been released from all assumptions about what is going on here. Simultaneously, I feel a sense of foreboding. It is making me a more eccentric old man. I am being herded by Life into a smaller and smaller corral. Becoming more unique, is hard on a social animal, like me.

All I can say, honestly, is that I am growing more and more impressed by the sense of wonder growing in me.  My life is changing. I can feel it. Maybe this is death setting in, or maybe, I’m finally coming to Life. I no longer can say. Whatever is happening, is unbidden, I know that, or do I, maybe in my childhood, I called in this late-life sense of wonder. All I seem to know now, is that the flow is carrying me, through this canyon, where the walls are made up of a kaleidoscopic experience that bedazzles and befuddles me.

I could say Life is wondrous. That seems true. Putting that awareness alongside of my awareness of how cruel, destructive, hateful and arbitrary Life can be, leaves me on-edge. I teeter between hope and hopelessness. I don’t know why I can see all of this, but I do. Some days it hurts, some days I feel so lucky. All I can really say, and think, is, isn’t it a wonder!?

Isolation

I’ve found myself giving a lot of thought to isolation. As a savvier than normal old person I have a particular apprehension about the nature and effects of isolation. I don’t think it is very healthy for we social animals. I am also concerned about the costs that we all pay living in a cultural world where isolation is normal. Our lack of community, combined with our general distrust of each other, adds up to neglect of certain parts of our shared humanity. This is the source of my dismay. It is also something I can feel.

I’m sort of not really isolated. By that I mean that I have worked on staying connected. I have my disabilities to thank for some of that. I literally could not survive if I didn’t have caring others in my life. I am also a community-builder, one of those people who actually believes community is our natural social habitat. I’ve been a pain in the ass to my friends that way. The upshot of all this, is that I have more people in my life than many single, old people.

When I was making reassurance calls (see my last Slow Lane) someone said to me that I seemed to have lots of contacts, and therefore wasn’t all that isolated. I said at the time, and feel it more strongly the more I think about it, that when one lives in a cultural world where isolation is the norm, being as socially connected as I am, seems-like more than it is. Surprisingly, I feel a sense of isolation, even though I’m more connected than the average bear.

Isolation, it strikes me, is particularly harsh and corrosive to we old people. I’m already disabled, and somewhat used to asking for help, but most folks haven’t adapted to the break-downs that come with elder life. I know how hard that is. I saw a national news story a few weeks ago, which proves this point. It was about an 85-year old veteran who had returned from a hospital where he had just had surgery. He made the news because he called 911 to get help. His refrigerator was empty, and he was in no condition to go shopping. Luckily, one of the 911 operators was a social worker, who bought him some groceries. Imagine, his story made the news, because he’s a veteran.

The story concluded by saying over 40% of people over 65 didn’t have any kind of support system. In my book, we are the veterans. Life kills us all off, eventually. But, in the meantime, let’s all pay attention to how we choose to live. Isolation is our doing. Our social nature is somehow askew. There is so much we could say to each other, if only one could listen. There is so much beyond what we could say to each other. Age takes you down into the moment and dares one to show up.

My circumstances teeter on the relationships that support me. I suppose you have that same vulnerability. Now, these relationships are in good shape. And, they are because I am my own primary caretaker, and I have a deep awareness of the danger of isolation. I still have some influence over my own fate, but if I couldn’t take care of myself (and I’m not far from not being able to do so), the isolation that is prevalent in our social realm is likely to determine what happens. That is part of the backdrop of my life.

So, I think about isolation. I have an on-going apprehension about the erosion of community. Lately, however, I’ve grown more aware of how my friends are being affected. I know health suffers when people don’t have enough social life. But lately, I’ve become aware that the medical community has diagnosed cognitive decline as a brain impairment (a purely mechanical thing, perhaps responsive to brain exercises or medication) rather than addressing the decline in interactions and caring. Getting together, doesn’t reduce memory loss, but does put it into a healthier context. Old people who are more connected live a different quality of life.

This issue is probably too vast for one of my Slow Lanes. But, the level of isolation we modern humans live with, is part of our lifestyle being out of balance. I think that the speed of Life we live with, amounts to passing each other by.

Not only that, I think the speed we maintain also means that we have a tendency to pass our selves by.  I am growing more aware of how many people isolate themselves.  I was ethically concerned, as a therapist by the reliance on the consulting room and confidentiality, because they reinforced social isolation. To me, those things had a tendency to undermine community. Now, I’m finding so many people who have adjusted to isolation. They are prone to isolate themselves rather than get themselves out into the social hub-bub, where they can continue being surprised and growing.

My concern about how isolated I am, isn’t so much about my own personal situation right now, as it is about what is going on all around me. I guess I’m a good example of one being affected by the social environment I’m living in.

I go so far as to say, “a person who is socially cut-off (no matter if by oneself, or larger cultural processes) is not actually a whole person.” That may sound harsh, and perhaps is, overly judgmental, but for all practical reasons, if isolation is allowed to prevail, it is too true.

Disability

I don’t want to write this Slow Lane, but I feel compelled to. I really don’t want to open up, what appears to me, a can of worms — a subject so sore and misunderstood that it seems only pain, heartache, and grief ensue. Yet, I’m feeling something stirring in me, ordering me to walk into this arena and draw attention to this topic. I don’t walk, so all that’s left to me is to open the subject. I am disabled.

There has been a long period, during which I have had to suffer enormous losses. Some of these losses have left me in a permanent state called disability. Now some souls have tried to rename this experience to direct attention to other attributes — you know like, differently-abled and alternately-abled — but they haven’t been able to erase the fear and ignorance that attends this loss of functioning. Disability is still perceived, by the majority of people, as something frightening and de-humanizing. Mostly, people avert their gaze and ignore this dimension of reality.

What compels me to write is not the general aversion I am subject to. I’ve gotten used to that. I’ve been broken-down long enough to have grown through the ignorance, disdain and fear. I am amongst the disabled folks who have learned to survive in this place. Basically, I’m pretty lucky — I have friends, colleagues, and others who see me primarily as one of them. In that sense I’ve succeeded. Many people don’t see me as disabled, they regard me as if I was like everyone else. In some ways this is what I, and many of the disabled people I know, long for — a sense of normalcy, and the acceptance that comes with it.

I have been aware that I have had a big desire to fit in, to be perceived for what I am, to be held as a person. I have gifts I want to be able to share. And mostly, I get to. I don’t call my self  “Lucky” by accident. That is a testament to my perseverance, and to the maturity of the people around me. As a disabled person, I have it really good.

But here is the problem. I function so well that the fact that I am disabled is anything but obvious. So even though I wear an eye patch, speak funny and am in a wheel chair, I am perceived more for my large and energetic presence, than my low functioning ways. I suddenly have become aware that through my own efforts, and the generosity of others, I am not really seen, as the disabled person I am. The irony I face is this, the effort I’ve put in to not being seen and treated as a disabled person has resulted in me not being seen and treated as a disabled person.

So, why is this a problem? Because the truth is, I am disabled. I am not really able to function like everyone else. Evidently, to overcome the fear of being reduced by others, I disregarded my own limitations in favor of fitting in. I have tried to be the good disabled person. Not at anyone’s insistence, but because I have thought that fitting in might help me deliver the gift granted me. Now I realize that strategy dooms me. I can’t keep up. My gift of awareness isn’t enough to transcend the limitations I actually have to live with. Worse yet, that kind of complicitous behavior works against another important awareness I have been keeping to myself.

You see, I’ve been aware for some time, that I am a kind of precursor. As a disabled person I am already dealing with the kind of prejudice and ignorance that old people (who are more slowly losing functioning and becoming disabled) have to deal with. Ageism, and prejudice against the disabled are on the same continuum. Human ignorance and fear create both, in different ways, but also in very similar ways.

I want to be capable of expressing the full spectrum of what it means to be old during this time. I also want others to have the support essential for them to give voice to what being older has to contribute to this era. If I let my disability become invisible and unseen then I am playing along with the belief that there is nothing for the old and infirm to contribute. I am also participating in the life-denying prejudice I abhor.

I know I probably have made some people uncomfortable along the way, I’m sorry about that. But, and here is the nature of my dilemma, while I am not a crusader for the disabled, I am trying to stir up awareness about the difficulties and beauties of being human, especially older humans. Sometimes I blunder along the way. Pardon my unbalanced and brain-damaged gait, it might be similar to your own, disabled in some ways and broken in others. Fitting in, while tempting, is a trap, that prevents Nature’s profusion from coming through us. The wonder of a broken-down person like me isn’t evident, and doesn’t shine fully on other people’s possibilities.

Showing Up and Letting Go

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."-Joseph Campbell

I’m learning something new about “showing up.” I have spent years practicing the Four-Fold Way, thanks to Angeles Arrien.  In latter years, I’ve counted on the belief that if an elder could just “show up” as him or herself, such a person would change the world. It would happen automatically. Just by daring to be present completely, an old person could embody a different way of being. By “showing up,” one could exemplify choices and reveal possibilities. So, “showing up” has always been a powerful practice. It promised me a chance to serve by merely being myself.

A few years ago, when writing Embracing Life, I realized that the Four-Fold Way held possible synergies that could unlock even more energy. I could see then, what I am learning now. When we combine “showing up” with another practice from the Four-Fold Way, “surrendering attachment to outcome,” or letting go, it becomes something even more powerful. It seems that I can only “show up” so much, if I don’t let go of the outcome. This realization is changing my life, and making it more possible to experience a deeper meaning in Joe Campbell’s words.

An earlier experience of this quote left me feeling angry. I thought, as I read it, that Campbell was advocating for some kind of denial, a spiritual bypass of the agony in our world. I couldn’t imagine “joy” showing up in the same sentence with “the sorrows in the world.”

As I’ve grown older, that earlier attitude began to change. I could feel something like that in what was unfolding around me. Old people were growing happier. They were becoming more comfortable in their own skins, more free and expressive, less emotionally reactive and truer to themselves. At first, I was suspicious of these changes. They seemed to be the changes of the privileged, those who were insulated from the woes of the world. My own increasing happiness was suspect. I was, like my counterparts, ripening into a deeper me, and becoming happier to be me. Life seemed a better place. I wasn’t sure this was a good development.

I wasn’t convinced that my increasing sense of wellbeing and happiness represented an improvement. How could I be happier as the house I lived in was burning? “Surrendering attachment to outcome” seems like a bitter betrayal of the Life on this planet. It is tantamount to letting the house burn down. It may be an acknowledgement of what I’ve always known and haven’t liked; I am not in control. Things go their own way. But, giving in to reality, while a definite relief, seems like abandoning ship, surrendering the garden to the gophers, and becoming complacent at the critical hour.

Here’s where paradox, something I have been learning about, as I have grown older, is important. Letting go lets one be with Life, as it does what it will. The house may burn down, and everything I love may go with it, but I will no longer be denying what is true, which is, that Life is occurring here. I feel an increasing joy because of my obligation to Life. I know about what Joe Campbell calls “the sorrows of the world,” and I feel an obligation to respond to the call of the moment. I can do both.

Maybe once, as a less mature person, I held a black or white belief, that was an either/or way of seeing things, but now, as an aging person, I am privy to a perspective that is paradoxical, both/and, where my joy and the world’s sorrows coexist. I am happier, and that happiness is filled with grief. It is a more mature and complex form of happiness.

The miracle, for me, is that I couldn’t have gotten to this joy if I hadn’t learned to combine letting go (and paradoxically gaining the world) with “showing up.” I am present in this world of perfect imperfection, because I am no longer trying to make it conform to some idea of perfection I hold. I couldn’t have learned this lesson, if Life hadn’t insisted I live on Its terms instead of mine, and “showing up” and letting go, brings me to that lesson.

I’m still learning and happier for it.

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For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com (2010 thru 2013) and http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com  (2014 on)

To hear archived versions of our radio program, Growing An Elder Culture, go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net

The Wild Kingdom

I am a critter, a wild being of nature. I come in the form of a social animal. I’m a complex organism coupled with this environment and unimaginably adaptive. I have evolved here.  I have been endowed by nature with a strange combination of abilities.  My kind is still evolving. I have a complex form of consciousness that pervades nature, but seems to reside with difficulty among my kind. The irony is that many of us think we are domesticated, tame, but I don’t. I think the wild permeates my nature. I know it.

There was a time, it has been much of my life, when I didn’t know how much of a part  of nature, I am.  You see, I grew up among other wild beings that mistakenly assumed that they had slipped the noose of being an animal; a part of the larger whole of teeming Life. I was brought up to believe that I was separate, special, and ultimately tame. Life, in these latter years, has shown me the hubris in me and in my kind.

The years I felt separated from Nature, from my deepest self, were painful, for many reasons, but none more so than the feeling of uncertainty I have had about belonging. I was lost, a member of a species that had lost touch with the dignity and beauty of its place within Nature. I learned the ways of not belonging, of distrust. I suspected others, the environment, Life, and most painfully, myself.

The years have piled up. The heartache of not belonging became normal. Environmental degradation just became a typical aspect of being an unnatural being. Alienation, the emptiness of not belonging, became a way of life. I was savvy enough to know better, but not developed enough to be better. I just limped along cut-off from my own nature, in fact, cut-off from most everything.

Today is different. Oh, the pain of feeling lost goes on! For all too many, Life still seems to be distant and retreating. The blood that surged in the most primitive part of my brain restored my animal nature. In civilized terms I lost a lot, but I was held onto by Life. In animal terms, I was bestowed with an experience of my true nature. Since then I have been fascinated with human nature, aware in a strange way, of my place, as a human being within the whole of Life.

Being an animal amongst humans isn’t easy. Besides the huge distrust that is everywhere, governing too many human relations, there is an insistence, even by those who claim an informed perspective, that the human being is so alienated, that almost nobody but the enlightened soul is capable of becoming one with Nature. I would suggest otherwise, but few will listen. Alienation runs deep now. Fleas know my blood is good, but other humans don’t recognize my animal nature. There is the heartache of not belonging, and the additional but different, heartache of belonging.

Life has taken on a more instinctive feel now. I know things with a kind of certainty that I never had before. Don’t get me wrong. I know I have a kind of pretend certainty, that comes from the arrogant, hubristic mind I developed to protect my self in the detached world I had lived in, but now, when I meet some new person on the trail, its like I have smelled their butt. I know who I can trust and why.  I can walk into a room filled with other human beings, and sense how things are going.  I have reason to believe these are innate aspects of my own human-animal nature that have been with me all along, but have been overlooked in my rush to become civilized.

Ageing is deepening this sense. I believe my proximity to death and Life are ripening me. They are aiding my process of returning to my true nature. As I, like many old people, become more unconventional and less defined by the larger culture, I find myself, growing wilder. With greyness has come a kind of freedom that one only has in the wilderness. I like it; at last, I’m getting to be what I am.

My inner life is blossoming. The process of being a civilized animal held me by focusing enormous stakes on surfaces. I have escaped the bondage of roles, rules, and of having to preserve myself as an economic being. Now, that which has always been within me is bursting forth. It’s like spring in a high mountain meadow. The true part of my true nature is welling up from within. I like this development.

All in all now, when I am with a group of humans and we are sharing some kind of project, I know that I am in the midst of wild things. I am on vision quest in the human wilderness. I am excited, humbled and thrilled to have returned to the herd, an elder, savvy and wild, because nature made me this way.

Making Solitude out of Loneliness

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I feared the corrosive effects of being alone. I didn’t really have a life of my own, and so I wanted to avoid the empty, hollow times when I was forced by unavoidable circumstance to experience loneliness. I know from experience how this season, the holiday season around Christmas and New Years, is fraught with images of family and connection. It is a time when loneliness, the feeling of being without, or beyond, meaningful connection is particularly hard. So, I feel compelled to write, at this time, to affirm what I have learned, the precious opportunity that loneliness presents, and the genuine hardship that comes along with it.

I spent some Christmases alone. Notice, I’m referring to more than one. I’ve had a chance to drink deep of the bitter seasonal ale, the one that ferments in one’s lonely heart.

I will be spending this New Years alone. The feel of this time coming, contrasts so sharply with those days of the past. I was alone then in a painful heartbreaking way, now my aloneness blankets me with comfort, love, and support. I want to write about the difference, to remind myself of what once was, and to make sure I’m clear about how I made the change. My well-being relies upon staying clear about how a lame, broken and fearful man was converted into a sparkling and energetic mystery.

Aloneness was always a sign of my inferiority, of my inadequacy. I don’t know why. I could speculate about it. I’m sure I could come up with some compelling theories now, but then, it just felt like something must be wrong with me. I know I suffered a kind of dread about being alone. Loneliness came, despite me. I’ve gone from quaking before the possibility, to seeking it. Transitioning from one kind of experience, and one kind of attitude, to another, has been a great gift I gave myself. This gift has rebounded to others as well. How this happened, I want embossed in my soul, and available to others, because something quite miraculous lies deep within the alchemy of this change.

I learned to love myself. That would not have happened so clearly for me if I hadn’t been alone. Loneliness became solitude, because no one else was around to distract me. I sat in my own juices, some might say, “my own shit,” until I started to feel some compassion for what I was doing. The loneliness turned, it became something else, something friendlier and more supportive, because I had to face myself. I not only came to terms with me, but I began to hold my life as on-going miracle. Solitude began, when I realized that I, despite my fear and distaste, was always present. Solitude became something I hadn’t expected. There was someone in the silence, someone who heard my complaining soul, someone who stayed with me, and someone who eventually calmed me down.

I didn’t take to being loved, especially by me. I kept thinking, “it was a dirty job,’’ that “someone had to do it.” I wanted someone else to have to do it (this was no favor). But, no one else was around. Loneliness, the absence of anyone else, brought me to my self.  Now, thanks to that unwelcomed development, I know that I never leave my side. I am now never truly alone. I have reluctantly become self-possessed. I am accompanied now, never alone, happy to have time with the one who stands inside me, even when I am quivering. I am now full in a way I was never before, and it is because I couldn’t run away from me.

Loneliness became solitude, and solitude became desirable when I discovered that inside myself lives a being making my life a desirable mystery. I want to know, and be, this man, as much as possible. Solitude has become an everyday thing. It is my way of staying true to the one within me. My new world of social relations is enriched by the presence of this one. I am alive as never before.

Solitude has become an inner love affair. I want to spend time with myself. I don’t have much fear of a time of looking at my life, evaluating whether I made good use of it, because now I have the only real compass that was ever granted to me. I am, in part, what I am created to be. I chuckle now, remembering how much I wanted to hide from myself, how much I feared being who I was, I am happy now, as an ageing man, because ripeness is setting in, and it all came through being alone. Loneliness became solitude. I became myself. The world opened. The miraculous became more evident.