Performing

One of the developmental achievements of old age is, what I refer to as, “escaping the gravitational pull of mass mind,” that is, getting away from being a cultural agent. A lot of energy goes into the effort to be genuine, to no longer be trapped by the values of convention. Old people in particular are motivated by a desire to be free, they don’t want to be captured by the conforming power of the system. The uniqueness of each of us, can be washed out of us, by our own desire to fit in. It is an especially human dilemma.

The effort to overcome conditioning is undermined by how good a repertoire of hiding one has developed. Or, how much your loved ones matter to you. To get by, one learns to perform. Getting good at knowing how to perform, how to respond to all situations with just the right way of being, that allows one to stay within the margins of acceptability.

 Behavior is one of the ways we show our identity papers. One is in the in-crowd if one can perform all the secret handshakes. After a lifetime of doing it, a mantle of normalcy hardens into place, and normalcy becomes routine.

Living outside the boundary of normalcy, out in the hinterlands of authenticity is hard, sometimes dangerous, and often painful. When humans get older, they are forced into the weeds at the margins. This is when the play between conformity and authenticity gets really interesting and dicey. Those who have not already developed a capacity for self-hood begin to feel trapped. And those who have —become avidly interested in tasting freedom before it’s too late — suffer ignominy.

Dying free and authentic is a deeply human value, that goes beyond the messages of comformity, that remain the pablum of the masses.

The struggle for the freedom to be oneself is rooted in the desire to be free of the constraints of passing, popularity, or marginality. As a human it is painful to be the subject of prejudice, invisibility, and misperception, and for some, it is equally painful, to live captive within social orthodoxy. Aging is hard, precisely because the urge to be free, runs one up against how unfree one has been. Throwing off the voluntary shackles one has assumed is challenging, enough so, that it can take a lifetime. Being old prompts that kind of awareness, necessitates change, and moves one dramatically into a minority position. The headwinds are greatest when the heart starts awakening.

Going beyond social conditioning requires an ardent drive. One that has to bear the humiliation that comes with failing repeatedly. Failing to be free happens a lot more than being authentic. Think about it, even the normal greeting, “How are     you?”  is laden with the challenge, are you one of us, or are you a wild unknown being? What passes for normal discourse can be loaded with stern messages about where the line is. The temptation is always pressing.

The urge to perform is always present. The better you have been at it — makes it all that more beguiling. Fitting in is so important to us humans, and being ourselves is becoming even more important. We don’t yet live in a world where both are acceptable, but if old people truly acquire freedom, the rest of us could. Meanwhile performing will go on, and authenticity will remain a desire that grows more pressing as we age.

Freedom isn’t free. Working on ourselves isn’t really work — it’s harder. And, growing more mature isn’t always welcome. Being human in a world of contradictions is a vulnerable opportunity. Performing in these circumstances is a hair-raising experience, one made for an exquisitely rare being.

 

 

 

  

Graceful Weirdness

The Cracked Water Pot: An Indian Story 

A water bearer in India had two large pots, each hanging on one end of a pole, which he carried across his neck. One pot was perfect and delivered a full portion of water after the long walk from the stream to the master’s house. The other pot had a crack in it and leaked, so that it always arrived half full.

For two years the bearer delivered only one and a half pots of water to the master. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. The cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfection and miserable that it was able to accomplish only a half of what it had been made to do.

It spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I want to apologize to you.”

“Why?” The man said.

“I am only able to deliver half of my load because this crack in my side causes a leak. Because of my flaw, you do all of this work and don’t get the value of your effort.”

The water bearer responded, “As we return to the master’s house, notice the beautiful flowers along the road. Do you see that there are flowers only on your side of the path? Because I know your flaw, I took advantage of it and planted seeds on your side of the path. You’ve watered them every day. And I’ve been able to pick them to decorate the master’s table. Without you being just as you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                      A West Asian Folk Tale

Perfection comes in many guises. We aren’t able to recognize them all. It’s just possible that what we consider our fatal flaw might just be perfection in disguise. Remember the cracked pot next time you are about to criticize yourself, or someone else. How many seedlings have we been nourishing unknowingly? It looks like Creation may be depending upon our broken ways. Beauty mangled is still beauty.

In fact, I think we might all be cracked pots. This life is weird enough that my flaws just might be my perfection. My crack pot ideas carry me into a host of situations that turn out in ways I would never expect. So, do my plans. Does the Universe chuckle, or am I imagining it?

There is no accounting for the way this life keeps twisting around and becoming something else. Usually something unexpected, that pulls out of us some hidden and unknown beauty. The water bearers creativity and compassion is a true model of our capacity.

Through some compassionate mystery we are perfect with all of our flaws. How’s that for a wacky full-paradoxical reality? Being human in such a world is just part of the graceful weirdness we get to be part of.\ 

 

 

  

Nature’s Call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

  

Across A Lifetime

I tend to think differently. There are many reasons that is the case, but the most significant one is that I have a developmental perspective. That means that I see how Life moves through each of us over a lifetime. The most amazing thing about this view, is that it reveals the many stages of growth that are typical for our species. This viewpoint has contributed to my overall confidence about what nature is doing with us. So, despite our abuse of the natural beauty that has been bequeathed to us, I still can see the way Nature thrives when we grow and become more mature.

There is an organic quality to us, the animal nature of who we are, that has been forgotten in our rush to become civilized. This has had many dire consequences, not the least of which, has been our assumed dominion over the natural world. In the process, all kinds of hell have been set loose. Everything has suffered, and especially in societies where this blind adherence to the preeminence of our kind has dominated, the old have suffered. What Nature has designed as the point of most natural transition (death), has become a place of fear, ignorance, and superstition.  Captured within the hubris of so-called modern culture, humanity, and all of Nature, labors from the misperception that Nature and humans are separate.

This misperception obscures the biological magic that defines us, that shapes who we are, and the place we can occupy in the great circle of being. Life has a hold on us, even as we pretend we don’t have a hold on it. So, some of us, through maturity, luck, and unconscious instinctive desire, still manage to return to the headwaters, and fulfill the cycle of life. We are part of a drama that has universal implications. Souls cycle through life, and return to the source.

My luck has been that I was torn apart, so nothing made any sense, and what remained, was only what exists beyond nothing — the immaterial realm. Without the usual kind of sight, I could see my own blindness. It (my blindness) existed even when I thought I could see. Only then did I look more carefully.

I learned that Life itself lived through me. Then, I paid more attention. Later revelations showed that Life moves through all the stages of humankind. Old people are the latest stage of a larger rushing torrent, the final unleashing. Some of them, broken and wrinkled on the outside, experienced Life moving through inside them, and have become the embodiments of Life. They give an expression of our natural inheritance. They are the wild fruit of a cosmological Mystery.

The old today are not the old of yesterday. Life moves on. Paradoxically, what seems old is new. Elders are beginners with strange sensibilities. Life is arriving again, in a form that looks familiar, but isn’t.

I think differently. This is my song. The only one I am capable of singing. A developmental perspective has changed my viewpoint, and made visible the inside story. Don’t take my word for it, check out the old people around you. Some of them, will disclose the possibilities, that Life brings. 

That will be hearteningly obvious. Interact with them. Consider embodiment. Life is there, in its eternal passing-through. Now, interact some more. Add depth to the Mystery. There we are. The children of this place. Elders posing near the beginning, which is an ending. The origin waters. 

 

 

 

  

The Noise

Asking for help has been illuminating. Watching what happens, feeling the agitation it evokes, waiting for responses, hoping for the best, and learning how hard it is to penetrate the noise, distraction, and preoccupation of others, awakens one. Asking is anything but a straight-line experience. It exposes one’s humanity, while revealing the human condition. Somehow, the word “we” comes more alive, vivid, and poignant. Collective wholeness is such a rare bird.

I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, by how difficult it has been for me to get people’s attention. The plea for help does not have much resonance in the modern overactive world. Last time I wrote about how speed kills. These last few days, I’ve come to experience how easily we lose touch with ourselves, and each other, in the mesmerizing rush of this violent version of modern life. I go to pieces each time I answer the call of being a normal agent of this kaleidoscope of activity.

My disabled self relishes the slowness it has imposed upon me. I am Lucky, and I feel a certain compassion when something, like my request for help, reminds me that the price of normalcy in this world is so exacting.  Then I feel the tidal wave of grief that is extracted by this fragmented, speedy life most of us are living. I know I feel inadequate, like I have failed the test, and I should go home and crawl under the bed. Luckily, most the time, I’m off this treadmill.

The treadmill, that is such a good metaphor for the kind of constantly distracting effort that modern life insists upon. From the vantage point of this go-go life, one can easily see how difficult it is to have a semblance of an integrated self. The world of commerce, efficiency and actualization throws everything and everybody into the hopper. What’s left is truly gross national product. Effluvial quantity rather than humane quality.

My simple request for help is making me too aware of the brokenness of this social moment. I wanted to help marginalized old people, only to get a big dose of how marginalized most of us are. The suffering of the old — not-knowing what a miracle we are, and this life is — is a debilitation that is wide-spread in this world. It has become normal suffering.

There isn’t enough money, balm, medicine, or realization to staunch this flow. It is no wonder the Earth is reeling. The old are only the harbingers of what is to come, and of what is happening. Modern times is a misnomer.

There is time for adjustment! There are still neighbors, family, partners —and most importantly, the one within — who can experience the glow of recognition. The redemptive quality of life hasn’t gone away because our attention has been diverted. Life cares more than that for us. Now, we just need to care that much for each other.

Once upon a time, I read of an anthropologist, who claimed he had discovered the missing link between modern man and our animal past. He proclaimed, “it is us.”

We still have time on our hands. Maybe we can discover the missing link within ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Stop

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence

 to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork.

 The rush and pressure of modern life are a form,

 perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

 To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns,

 to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects,

 to want to help everyone in everything, 

is to succumb to violence.”

- Thomas Merton

 

This is a painful one. I have no expectation that anything is going to change. Writing about slowing down is a lost cause. I’ve been writing about the dangerous pace of life since 2005. The Slow Lane got its name from the perception that arose in me, because my stroke stopped me, and revealed a world that I had missed in my daily rush. If that hadn’t happened I might not have had a clue. Now I am impressed by how slippery, and easy to miss, this perception of cultural time is. It is more than the water we swim in, it is the blindness we extol.

I cannot believe that a form of violence this profound could be so invisible, so imperceptible to us. Worse yet, some of us, take pride in being so busy as to be totally oblivious of time.  Some of us even take pride in our harried lateness. There is a form of mass murder that is disguised by rushing. It isn’t necessarily of others, but of the spirit. “Speed kills” in so many ways, some gross and obvious, and others, so subtle and thorough. Being mangled is just part of doing business in this culture.

All of that, the disfigurement of our kind, the disregard of our souls, the neglect of our own higher sensibilities, is the price we pay, while all along we pretend to be evolving.  It would be a painful dance were we not so distracted. Getting more done in less time is a powerful brew. Smiling absently, we have too great a tendency to celebrate our own unconsciousness. The race to the finish line is exactly that.

Lamentably, this painful tract can go on and on. There is no limit to the effectiveness of speed. Happily, there is an antidote. It is called a breakdown.

In this twisted-up world what looks like breakdown is sometimes breakout. In those rare, painful and debilitating moments, through the alchemy of real life, little clearings reveal a less violent way of being. This is a world that moves in a more paradoxical way. The urgency of machine time gives way to the primacy of the eternal moment.

Strangely, old age, the bane of the crowd, provides as much of this lax freedom as most people can handle. For many it is confusing. There are no time stamps, deadlines, or appropriate seasons, no way to objectively measure progress, value, or productivity. Instead there is only the spacious unfolding of desire. The advance that occurs outside of time, without effort or intention. Aging takes one beyond the rush, to the heart of the matter. The clock ticks differently when urgency disappears.

One could even say hurrying debilitates, while slowing down illuminates. In this way, the old, who are pushed out of the way, and treated like they cannot arrive at what’s important, see better what matters, and are essential aspects of the meaningful journey. The old tend to dodder, thereby insuring the magnificence around us gets noticed.

Downshifting happens naturally to all of our benefit. It looks like old age, but it is really the return of good sense.

 

 

 

 

The Second Placenta

Only in old age with the proximity of death

 can one truly experience a personal sense of the entire life cycle. 

That makes old age a unique stage of life …...

                                                        Pulitzer-Prize winning gerontologist Dr. Robert Butler                                                                              

Death is a topic that many old people talk about. Unlike the general culture, older folks know the proximity of death is closer, and therefore consider it a part of their advancing years. Conventional knowledge, what passes for common knowledge, places death in a taboo zone where it is rarely talked about. Old people are not so bound by convention, and non-conventionally consider death part of a larger picture that is surprisingly unfolding as they age. Some say, something unheard of is coming into sight.

This leads to some pretty creative speculation. No one knows what is transpiring when we humans pass from this world, but there are nearly as many stories as there are people. Some are compelling because they convey compassion, justice and peace. Some render to the void all that passes. Some convey only a deep sense of mystery. All revolve around uncertainty.

For a long time now, I’ve had my own story. It started without my knowledge in the seventies when I was in my late twenties, working as a vector control technician for a local mosquito abatement district. I had to learn the biology of all the pests that can plague we humans. Rats, gophers, fleas, yellowjackets and especially mosquitos, were the objects of my day-to-day attentions. In order to combat mosquitos I had to learn about their complex three-stage life cycle. Two stages in water, as pupa and larva, then onto adulthood, in the air.

Later, I began to think of human life composed of stages. Our complexity unfolding along the way. Even later, as I was confronted more with the enigma of death, I began to think about a multi-stage life trajectory. It occurred to me, that like the mosquito, we might with maturity achieve a stage unlike any before. For me, non-material being is as plausible a shift as the mosquitos venturing, with greater maturity, into the air. I became enamored with the idea of death being just another stage of life.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve become less and less afraid of dying.  I think Life has delivered so many unexpected wonders that I basically trust what I know is coming. I know, not everyone can say that. I am Lucky, and I know it. Never-the-less, I am going to disappear, like everyone else. I know that too. So, it is helpful to me to maintain my illusion, and to think of being cradled in a natural form of progression.

Recently, another similar idea came over the horizon.  Suppose this body I rely on  that is breaking down, is really only a temporary vehicle, a placenta, designed biologically, to help sustain and convey what’s inside me, to another different stage of Life. The idea of my body being a second placenta appeals to me. Especially because it conveys the lived experience I’ve had, my current life being a kind of amniotic fluid that has held me and nurtured my development. Maybe I am just aging — slowly maturing — into a yet to be, ripened being.

Anyway, each of us carries an image of the transition we have to make. Each is extremely powerful, determinative, and speculative. I hope yours satisfies you, and contributes to you making the best of your time here. The second placenta does that for me. May something like it be true for you.