Trying

I have to admit I write about this reluctantly. I have an ambivalent relationship with trying. I guess these mixed feeling can be attributed to once having someone say to me, that “try was a coyote word.” By that, I took her to mean it was a word I might choose to give myself an out, a way to fail comfortably. I know that tendency too well. But, trying goes deeper for me than that. At least I hope it does. That uncertainty is the source of my ambivalence. I really don’t know how much of myself I am giving to anything. I’d like to think I am in charge, that I define my efforts, but I really am uncertain about that. So trying stays in my vocabulary and I have to live with the uncertainty that comes with it.

Life seems to constantly be asking me to be more than I see myself to be. It isn’t just that I have an inaccurate image of myself and I can do, and be, more. That certainly happens. But there are times when Life seems to be asking me to do something I know I’m not capable of. Sometimes I do know myself, and recognize my actual limitations. Life doesn’t seem to care. It asks me, in no uncertain words, to go ahead.  Then, if I have the appropriate audacity, I have to try. Trying in those kinds of moments is a leap of faith. It is going beyond myself in some desperate attempt to mollify the unknown.

I’ve told myself, and enough precious others, that I know my writing, and my work building community is on track when I’m having an “oh shit” moment. When I realize I’m thoroughly over my head, and I have put myself in this place where I can see no way forward, I know I’m doing a good job. I have to go to the place of my limitations to discover any possibilities. I can’t really explain something that is this paradoxical. I have to be hurting and totally afraid too get to a place where I have a chance of making a difference. I don’t like to be raw that much. I don’t like to ache nakedly in public ways either. But I know this is what it takes for me to do anything real. I want to try, and I want to avoid it like the plague.

Life is asking that much of me. Sometimes, if I’m really honest, most times, I just try to ignore the fact that I can feel when I’m being asked to go further than I’ve gone before. If I put it off long enough the call gets louder and I begin losing my confidence in myself, and in Life. I want to do anything else. I even fool (or so I think) myself by doing things sort of like what I’m being called to. I’ll try anything to avoid trying what I know is real. No doubt this is the real source of my ambivalence. I know I’m still susceptible to fooling myself.

I should know better. I’m just Lucky enough to have been pushed off the cliff, and to know that falling and flying can be the same thing. But, I’m still living in a world where it looks like falling can lead to suffering. I don’t want to suffer, but if I’m good at avoiding that kind of suffering, I suffer with the knowledge that I’m avoiding something crucial. In the end, I try because I make the choice of facing my lack of choice. I choose to suffer the not knowing, the leap into the abyss, the “oh shit’ moments, because I know that if I don’t I am going to suffer another kind of suffering. Either way I look at it I suffer, so it might as well be trying to be something I’m not.

Strangely, it seems as if Life thrives on this kind of choice. I don’t like it much, but you know what, being used by Life in this way, increases my respect for Life and for the level of challenge I’m engaged in. I have greater self-respect, greater compassion for others, because I have an idea how hard, and how precious, it is to really try.

Trying, if it comes too easily, is suspect, because really trying is a trial. There is doubt and no way out. The jury doesn’t render the standard verdict of guilty or not guilty. In this case the jury is within, and the consideration is the quality of life. Real trying is living uncertainly. It is leaping into the unknown without the pretense of a net. It is what Life is doing with us.

Arrival

A report from the Slow Lane

There is something happening, particularly with older people, which I don’t think has been commented upon. I think that this phenomenon needs to be reported and considered, for the sake of those getting older, and for the sake of everyone who is pursuing genuine happiness. There is an actualization of self that can take place, in the later years, that brings happiness, fulfillment, and most importantly, the kind of unique perspective that can make hope a real thing. I call this phenomenon “arrival”, if you keep reading you’ll see why.

What I have to report is paradoxical. It isn’t straightforward, or simple, that is probably why this change, this particular form of the initiatory attainment is not well-known. If you think about what I’m describing here, you will probably know someone who has achieved this state, it isn’t new, just not widely commented upon. In some strange way, there is a taboo here. Happiness, and even freedom, are achievable — just not the way that the mainstream is invested in. There is no wrinkle cream, other than life, that can convey this particular elixir. Some of us have come to life in a way that is both an arrival, and a real departure from the norms of our society.

What am I referring to? Lately, I’ve observed, and gotten to know, people who are genuinely happy, full of life, who feel well situated and are already making a difference. These are people, which in my way of seeing things, have ripened. They have become themselves. These folks are, by and large, the elders amongst us. They don’t make a lot of noise, don’t call attention to themselves, don’t think they’ve done anything special, but they have achieved something, I think we all need to know about. They have arrived.

By arrival I mean that they occupy the very rare space of becoming themselves while being on their journey. They have a sense of becoming whole, uniquely themselves, free to be what they need to be, and they have a destiny before them. They have arrived — and as part of their arrival — they know they are departing. They occupy a truly paradoxical, and special space.

Arrival means they have become themselves, achieved true uniqueness, and are happily reconciled to this development being only half of the story. Death will come. They don’t fear it. Certainly adventure awaits them. Because they are themselves, they are ready. Their achievement, their existence, is important for us to notice. They reveal to us one prospective way to live, the possibility of actualizing ourselves, the miraculous perception that who we are, just might be what is needed.

I’m not talking about your average old person here. Though I could be, it is never too late to become yourself. I’m addressing the fact that some people never stopped learning, and going through the hopper of hardship. These folks, it appears, found a way to use hardship, pain, and loss creatively. They have made of their lives works of art, they have found ways to become themselves, to achieve wholeness.

They have a lot to teach us, but not in the school sort of way. Their knowledge isn’t something that can be transmitted in lectures, it takes the stuff of life. A part of the reason we need to know that such a thing as arrival is possible, is because to learn the art of being whole takes time, and is best communicated by absorption in the dilemmas of life. The elder best teaches by example. The learner learns best by honoring the teacher, and in this case, by noticing the arrival of those who know something important.

I keep saying there is a paradox here. I don’t say that to show off, or to make this attainment seem more difficult than it is. I say it because I’m impressed by the unlikelihood of this development, by the life-giving, character building nature of what they have been through. Life, evidently cared about them enough, to have really roughed them up. They, in turn, seemed to have cared enough on their own, to have turned that hardship into something original.

I remember once hearing a story, a part of which, went like this, “a Zen Master said to a group of his students, “You are perfect as you are, and you could use a little improvement.” I think that the paradox of our being explains what he means, and explains how elders could be arriving just as they are departing. I think we are always connected to the larger reality. For that reason, we are perfect as we are. We are after all a part of a larger whole that is also perfect as it is. Elders, as they become themselves, are little wholes who shine with the light of the larger whole, a joined part of that great magnificence.

We human beings are part of that larger whole and we are a separate piece, responsible for our own wholeness. The journey includes becoming a part of the whole and becoming whole unto our selves. That is how the Zen students can be perfect as they are (they are manifestations of the whole, whole themselves) and need a little improvement (and they are evolving, semi-complete parts of the whole). Elders too are arriving, manifesting their wholeness, and departing, manifesting their evolving partness.

Arrival is a real thing, a possibility that we cannot afford to ignore, just because it doesn’t look like completeness. Arrival is also essential to our kind. The old look like they are over the hill. The truth is that they have lived long enough to realize there is no hill, but there is the possibility of coming home, to them selves, and to the Universe. The rest of us, if we don’t notice elder actualization, live with no knowledge of the possibility of a homecoming. What is a journey that contains no arrival? Elders do arrive, and because they do, we know we can too.

Loving Yourself

A report from the Slow Lane

Sometimes I believe I’m not part of the whole. I know, that’s silly, and it hurts so much. I know better, but every now and then some form of amnesia comes over me and I forget. I guess the experience of connection (despite the fact that it has been lifelong) doesn’t run deep enough yet. I frequently fall into moments when I feel untethered, when I am lost, or so it seems. I can’t seem to consistently hold myself with the reverence needed to maintain appropriate perspective. I am finding that loving myself is not easy. And, I am gradually learning how essential it is to holding on to my connection with the whole.

Loving myself is still fairly new, and is tenuous at best. I didn’t know, until recently that it was necessary to care about myself, and even possible. If I hadn’t had a long time of lonely recovery after my stroke I might not have ever known how important I am to the equation of unfolding.

I look back at that time with wonder. Early on, the life I knew was defined by grief, loss (so much of who I was disappeared), and some strange will to go on. Only later did it become about what remained (and thankfully that was a lot). Somewhere in that long time of day-to-day uncertainty I came across my neglected self. I think it was when I felt alive enough to feel alone. I started longing for a relationship. It was a totally irrational desire. It always has been. But at that particular time, this longing, for a relationship seemed especially off because I was so severely broken physically and psychically.

Being irrational, the situation didn’t matter much. I longed for someone to know and care about me anyway. Well, almost needless to say, there was no one there. This was a good thing. It was another of the painfully disappointing lessons that I was lucky enough to be brought to. The absence of someone else was gravelly disappointing to me, but it introduced to me the one person who was there. Me. I didn’t much like or trust myself so I wasn’t thrilled to discover this remnant of a human being. The only reason I didn’t dismiss him is because I couldn’t. This misfortunate circumstance (which I could literally do nothing about) was the beginning of the relationship that frees and connects me now.

I didn’t know it at the time. I was just chagrined. I was stuck with me. I had managed to become the booby-prize in my own life (thankfully). I had a hard time sleeping at night, because sleeping alone meant sleeping with me. I wasn’t ready for that kind of intimacy. Ready or not, I got to know myself. And I discovered something. I’m not proud of what I realized, of what I have been doing all these years, of how I have used the women in

my life, of how I have avoided the obvious. But it became clear to me, that I preferred someone else to love me. The way I put it, in my own mind, was that I would rather have some woman do the dirty job of loving me than having to learn to love myself.

Happily for me, though it didn’t seem like a boon to me at the time, no woman was volunteering to sign up for the job. I continued to be left on my own. Disability is the shits, but sometimes it forces one to sit still. I got to know me because there wasn’t anyone else around.

It started with compassion. I realized that although I couldn’t personally love me, I could have compassion for the difficult life that he/me lived. Paying attention that way I began to admire the way he/I courageously persevered. I started to like what I saw. That is when loneliness became solitude. The time alone was better for me than I ever imagined. I was learning something about loving the one I’m always with.

I had a few friends. I could see, during this time of learning, that they tended, as I had done, to avoid them selves. I could see how this was costing them, and I got a lot clearer about how not loving myself was costing me. It was then I realized I had to quit avoiding doing the one thing I had always felt was a bad idea. Too avoid the pain and misery of living in a constant lie, I took on the pain and misery of learning to love the untrustworthy soul I seemed to be.

During the Christmas season only a year ago, I gave myself, accidentally, the best Christmas present I had ever received. I was alone as usual. I was scared about what that might mean. I wasn’t sure I could face more long-ticking hours of silence and aloneness. Instead, I had a wonderful time. I was the good, reflective creative companion I always wanted. I gave myself the seasonal spiritual retreat I always wanted. I discovered I loved myself. I, and the wisemen, arrived to behold another form of the Christmas miracle, the birth of a new relationship. Light has poured out of it ever since.

There are periods, like earlier this week, when I forget that I am always connected, and that I am a living portion of the whole. I forget to hold onto myself, that strange paradoxical being that resides uniquely as me, and somehow miraculously joins me to everything else. I forget to love me. I forget that I am love. Somehow, something of me keeps going, evolving right along with this mysteriously expanding Universe. I know it, live constantly in awe, aware of such fragile and impermanent creativity, and I forget.

I have some memory problems creeping up. Age is having its way with me. But I don’t think this is why I forget. I think I forget because I want to fit in. I go back to the well of community. It seems necessary that I forget so I can discover it again through my confusing connection with others. It turns out, that loving myself is still hard work, because the Universe is so big and diverse, and because loving myself means always going beyond myself to become larger, more complex, I forget who I am, and lose my grip on me,  in order so I can re-discover who I am, and learn to love me anew.

Loving yourself is learning to love the whole! Wow!

Only A Child

I was raised in a Christian (Catholic) home, but it didn’t take. I don’t know what I am. All I know is that I escaped from parochial school, catechism, and the best evil eyes of several priests and nuns with my own spirituality in tact. Today I would say I’m a Mysterian. I’ve been shaped by lots of influences from the world’s spiritual traditions, but I am enamored most by the Mystery that seems to reside behind them all. In the final analysis, I think I belong to the religion of no religion, a tradition that grew up with the human potential movement. Oh, but the Mystery awes me!

The Christmas season doesn’t do much for me. I’m turned off by its crass commercialism. The lights, trees, jolly fat man, songs and pageantry seem to me to be a poor expression of our sense of togetherness. I haven’t really celebrated Christmas in years. That doesn’t make me a Scrooge, or a pagan, or a Zombie. I am just thankful for the winter, and I have a continued hope for a real reflective period of silence.

I didn’t leave my marriage with any of the Christmas ornaments. I guess the stroke, and what seemed like near death, combined to make Christmas seem kind of irrelevant. I even gave my crèche to my daughter. I thought I had gone beyond Christmas. The underworld doesn’t have bright lights, and good cheer is extremely rare. I languished there a long time, nearer to death than to life, and was shaped into someone who appreciates Life, and the changes it brings.

I survived; I even have a new life now. But the experience of being held on the threshold, which I experienced more like a precipice, remains with me, and informs all I do.  My sense of the spiritual is much darker than most. I am still enamored of Mystery, but I have a solid dose of reverence for how this “larger something” can move in ways that are dark and unfathomable. I have reason to be grateful, and my gratitude is tempered by a sense of how fleeting and vulnerable everything is.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that I had three Christmas ornaments. They were the Magi. For several Christmasses now they have watched over my living room, colored my holiday solitude, and drawn me deeper into the Christmas story. I discovered, to my surprise, there was an aspect of the Christmas story, following a star in the darkness, which I could relate too. I imagined myself a wise man caught-up in a deep intuition, following a strange light in the darkness. My light was within, but I had to follow it just the same.

I have been on a long journey. I’ve been following a internal phenomenon I can’t name. I don’t know the how of such things, but the journey seems to be unfolding me. As long as I’ve wandered, alone, I’ve been compelled to keep going. It has seemed to me a twisted journey, a trip thru the dark lands, a lonely vigil at the bedside of a dying man, a delusion that was unfolding me in ways I could not understand.

The wise men give me solace. They reintroduced me to a part of the mystery of Christmas, a part of all real pilgrimages, which I have forgotten. It isn’t enough to be on a journey. There must be some times of arrival. The Magi came to the birth of a child. The journey had led them to something surprisingly ordinary. Only a child! At the end of the journey, there is a new beginning.

This year I’ve been looking at the Christmas story anew, not just from the travels and travails of the Magi, perhaps because I have a new life, perhaps because Mystery compels me too, perhaps because I’ve come far enough to really get what the journey has been about. Only a child! I know the Christian trip is about this being baby Jesus, the savior of mankind, but for me this infant represents something different, equally miraculous, but differently saving.

At some point in the journey, I am compelled to stop and pay homage to what has been born in me. The journey has become something. Something new has come into the world! I don’t know what this new being is yet, I can feel it is full of potential, potential that as it gets realized, makes me someone who is capable of saving my self and being useful to the world. The child I stumbled across on my journey is me, an unknown mysterious me, the light of my future, the beginning of a new life. I am the gift I always wanted.

Only a child — a miracle dressed up so ordinarily. Only a child — a beginning at the end. Only a child — some newness within that signals a new life. Only a child — a vulnerability dependent upon wise attention. The story of Christmas has changed me. The story of Christmas is not about a divine birth happening 2000 years ago, it is about the birth of hope within and now.

May you find what waits to be born in you this year!

Occupy

I’ve been watching with hope, amazement and a measure of curiosity this thing called the Occupy movement. No one, it seems, really knows what is happening. As Dylan sang in, “The Times They Are A Changing,” “ the wheel is still in spin.” I don’t have the magic that might be required to capture the meaning of this timely movement, but I do have the desire, and the audacity, to give this moment words.

Occupy seems to be a new, refreshing phenomenon. The focus upon economic justice, the non-heirarchical way of operating, and the radically democratic impulse, all seems to give hope to those who would speak truth to power. I sense a social movement away from the rut of the past. I also am aware that what I see are just the outside manifestations of a movement, that Occupy has an inside dimension. It is this, the inner aspect of Occupy, which I want to explore.

I have heard, and seen, placards which say, “Occupy the Heart!,” or, “Occupy Your Self!,” and I wonder at these words, these sentiments. What could it be, that joins these ideas with a demand for economic and social justice? What is coming to the fore, in this time of instability, uncertainty and economic hardship? I sense that the 1%, that is suspected of having too much of everything, doesn’t have much heart, or self. What gives? What is really at play?

I can’t claim to know.  I can only ponder. Like everyone else, I add my voice to those calling for a new social compact, a new more humane arrangement, one that makes room for genuine caring. This caring, it seems to me, starts within, and that is why I’m paying so much attention to the inner landscape of the Occupy movement. You see, if I’m going to be associated with picketing, with any kind of movement, then I want it to promote actual change, and I live with the prejudice that real change occurs from the inside out.

What does it mean to occupy your self? What does it take to free your self, enough to be involved in freeing someone else? Speaking as a psychologist, this question is relevant to this moment, if there is going to be any kind of historical change. Speaking as an active observer of culture I’m looking for more depth rather than a quick fix. The refusal to bow to the media, and those others who pressure for a simple message, is reassuring.

 “Occupy Your Self,” that sounds right, but what does it mean?

I don’t know what it means to you, or anyone else, but to me, it means something about being comfortable in your own skin. There are a lot of dimensions to that comfort. There is the refusal to use another (in any capacity). There is the tendency to make others responsible for your well-being. And, on a more positive note, there is a capacity to responsibly place the self vulnerably in the hands of another.

Capitalism isn’t just exploitation of the masses. It is also capitalizing on our own internal resources (including development). I have found that the tendency to be outer-directed, and to use others (capitalize on them), is related to exploitation of the self, to an anti-democratic desire for power.

For me, “Occupy the Self” means placing an encampment within. It means staying put, not being run-off by the authorities, the beneficiaries of a self-imposed system that is corrupt. It is the effort to know fully, to get educated about, the tyranny perpetrated inside. It is having general assemblies and letting minority voices be heard. It means demonstrating, by drawing attention to, the practices that diminish humanity. Occupying the self seems like a prerequisite to true justice. Such a form of occupation seems like a rare, and welcome, form of activism.

The democratic impulse, it seems to me, is an expression of the self. We are only as free as “we the people” can tolerate. That means, like the oxygen mask that appears in a crisis on a plane, it has to be fixed on one’s self, before anyone else can be helped. Re-ordering economic reality means re-aligning our values, it means re-dreaming the American dream. I think this is a deeply personal process that really requires a re-defining of the self. For this to happen it would be helpful if we had a Self-September, or something, that was as news worthy as Black Friday.

Who is consuming everything? It’s too easy, although it’s mostly true, to say it is Americans. Really, it is everyone who participates in the wrong-headed idea that the source of freedom, fulfillment and salvation, is out there somewhere. Occupy means thinking locally, and in this case, so locally as to look and act within your own skin. Occupy, if that is true, represents something fundamentally radical, something so old that it has come around again,  “Know Thyself.” That is all, in the final analysis, that any of us truly does occupy.

Childhood's End

There was a book I read when I was a teenager. I went through a bunch of science fiction stories in my desire to escape from the world I was slowly coming to know.  This book scared and delighted me. Looking back on it, as is my elderly want, I see it a little differently. At the time I was horrified that adulthood, assuming the real powers that Life had endowed us with, meant the destruction of our home planet. The book was named Childhood’s End (by Isaac Asimov), and even today it is making me think.

I think we have come to the time where, as a species, our childhood is ending. In the book, the planet Earth was destroyed by teenage exuberance. Human children had inherited, in an evolutionary leap, mental powers that they could not contain. In a spasm of discovery, they destroyed their beginning place. In the book this wasn’t that traumatic because it was clear that this destruction was just part of these children discovering they were made to inhabit the Cosmos. Today, I am less certain this is a good thing. Is it possible we could grow up, as a species, without destroying everything we’ve been?

I don’t know about you, but this question haunts me. I can’t say that I feel optimistic. I don’t rule the possibility out. I count on Mother Nature having something up her sleeve. I know, from my time amongst the elders, that we, as a species, can be changed. The right kind of hardship could alter us, could grow us up. I live with a certain amount of dreadful hope. I look forward to what I think will be too difficult to imagine. I don’t expect to survive. I want to, not to pass my genes on, but because I would like to be part of a world where I felt us pulling together, counting on each other, caring about the miracle we’re part of.

I think that time could be now, but it isn’t.  So, I live in a world where I feel an impending something, there is a storm cloud on the horizon, a shock-wave coming, a last moment of daylight, a gathering of the hopeful. I teeter on this moment of uncertainty. I am sometimes happy, sometimes sad, and always expectant. I want so desperately to see a way forward. What I see instead is many people coming forward with solutions. I’m skeptical, although I want to believe.

Teetering is a hardship. Maybe recognizing what we have wrought will bring us to our senses. Maybe the danger we pose to each other, to ourselves, will shake us. Do things have to get worse before they get better? Aren’t things bad enough now? I’d like to think it is possible to wise up under the present circumstances. I suppose that is part of why I want to hang out with elders. Certainly, my life has been enriched, by rubbing shoulders with those who have suffered and grown. But, we (elders) are still so unknown, and our kind remains so undeveloped. The last one billion of us were only born in the last 12 years.

I don’t know what to think. I want to, but I can’t shut off my mind. I know many have. I envy them sometimes, but I know my heart really depends upon my keeping my ear to the ground.

I can feel that there is an earthquake coming! The terrible thing is, that despite all my awareness, despite the loved ones I cling to, despite the efforts of others that care, I sense that none of us is really prepared. I console myself with thoughts of initiation, social metamorphosis, a general awakening, but I don’t see it happening yet. The Occupy movement seems to offer some hope, but hope for what, economic equity in a time of economic chaos, social justice in the face of massive social distrust.

Change, it is here, impacting everyone. Do we have to destroy this world to grow into another one? I don’t know. There is that much I can hope about, what I don’t know. Surprise! That is what is left to believe in, to prepare for, to be transformed by. That, and knowing, that this, is the time of childhood’s end.

I have also added a link. I don’t usually recommend websites but I have long felt that we (society) needed a vision of a future worth having and this short film points in that direction, Check it out http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-08-31&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Apoptosis

I awoke early in the morning thinking about apoptosis. There is some precedent for me waking up early. I’ve had the repeated experience of waking up early on Friday mornings with a kind of incredible mental clarity. I seem to know things. I’ve awoken thinking about people, relationships, groups, ideas and the world. I have what I have come to call a kind of truth sense, I know things, things I wouldn’t have guessed I knew, things about how I should act, things I wasn’t aware I was thinking about. This morning it was apoptosis.

I am somewhat familiar with the word: it stands for voluntary cell death. I don’t know how it came to me. What made that word, which was not in my conscious thoughts, suddenly come into my awakening mind? I don’t know. This exegesis is not about that strange occurrence, it is about the mystery of apoptosis, and what it’s appearance brought into my life.

Let’s start with a true story. I had an accident last month (9/15). I lost control of my car and drove into a tree. I totaled my car, hurt my passenger (not too seriously, Thank God!), and scared myself. Since then I have been wrestling with the idea that my driving career is over. I don’t want to face this possibility, but I cannot be sure that I can keep anyone (myself included) safe on the road.

For about a month I’ve been without a car, and researching the possibility that I could avoid the termination of my driving career by acquiring an electric street vehicle. I found a vehicle (a street legal souped up golf cart with a top speed of 25 mph), someone who would customize it for me (and my wheelchair), someone who would even store it over the winter, so I could qualify for a federal tax break, and convince my community to put in a few charging stations. My mind went to work, and found a viable driving option that would allow me to maximize my freedom. I was pleased, imagining a locally expanding orbit, compensating for the inaccessible world I was coming to.

Then I awoke thinking about apoptosis. I knew apoptosis was an evolutionary breakthrough, the voluntary death of some cells enabling multi-celled beings to grow new and more capable. Death led to new life. I wasn’t sure what this thought was doing in my mind, or how it got there, but I noticed something unexpected: I was ready to give up driving!

Apoptosis, I later learned is the voluntary, “programmed” cell death that lets larger organisms survive and evolve. I discovered, to my chagrin, that I was willing to let this capacity (driving) go for the sake of not feeling anxious that some other part of life was going to be put in jeopardy. I realized, that if I could let this imagined freedom die, I, and the rest of life, would be free of one more possible threat. My beloved community would be a safer place to be part of.

This was just the beginning of how apoptosis is affecting me. I have been concerned about death, harboring some fear that this unknown transition would be painful, debilitating, and the end of the road. In my depths I’ve been fretting about how my fear of death has been shaping how I show up in life. Then I began to think about how apoptosis represents the awareness that cells have. Life for the larger organism, to which they are a part, their larger self (if you please), is aided by their voluntary death. I began to think of death as a part of a larger life-form.

I don’t know about how you deal with your personal death, but for me, the idea that my death might be part of life, that my death could be a service to the larger whole, is changing everything. I am not a suicide bomber seeking some kind of paradisiacal solution to end all problems, instead I am willing to live, and surely to die, for the sake of helping Life find a way to go on. I find re-assurance in the sense I have; that this life is not mine, it is Life’s, and that my death insures that Life has what It needs to keep going, and to keep evolving.

Apoptosis —“ voluntary programmed cell death that gives a larger, more complex organism, the capacity to grow and evolve.” That seems to me to be an excellent description of human death. Life benefits, it goes on, and confers upon all of us, who’s passing enables It, a little taste of being as eternal as It is. Ripening, like I think I have been doing, especially in these latter years, seems to be a way of becoming as richly endowed with the complex stuff of Life, so that with my passing something of this life goes on.

I also like the feeling I have that comes with apoptosis being somehow in my mind. I seem to be more connected than I realize. Apparently, probably like everyone else, I know more than I think I know. That now makes sense to me, I am connected, a part of a larger organism, that knows things, I can only marvel at, and sometimes be informed by.