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.