Crumbling

All it takes is a little look around, and I see what I don’t want to see. My world is crumbling. It is going the way of the dinosaur, becoming the scene I once was thrilled being within, the family that once bore me, the life I once lived. It is all moving on, passing so quickly, going into the inscrutable silence. I am overwhelmed, sensitized and dumbfounded. Living now is an affair of loss. Everything is crumbling.

There was a time when I merely complained about this. It seemed some anomaly, a lose edge designed to awaken me, and return me to a former life refreshed by a bigger perspective. But now, I cannot deny the impermanent nature of all things. This, as a friend says, is a bittersweet realization. It frees me as it reduces me. The crumbling is me.

I can rhapsodize about death. The great poets and holy men have made of it a kind of healing justice, but none have taken away the heartache. Hot tears may wash me clean for awhile, but the steady corrosion of loss, eats away all the cleanliness. I am the wicked witch of the west shrinking into nothingnesss. I am the mystery that is here and gone. I am an illusion I had for a while. Crumbling is.

There is relief in knowing nothing is permanent. I relish the demise of what I cannot abide. But then, I don’t let myself know what inevitably follows. Into whatever, the mysterious disappearance, the many after-life assumptions, the mad refrains of freedom and peace, do not appease the uncertain ache of the crumbling. I am amazed, delirious, sobered and incredulous. The crumbling goes on unabated.

Is it delirium; a form of intimacy, a desperate admission, a death bed confession, a wise resignation, an admission of vulnerability, to say that the crumbling is a brilliant and highly anxiety-producing aspect of my experience? Do I love more, or shrink more, because of it? I don’t know. The crumbling goes on anyway.

There isn’t a lot to write about, when everything passes. No words could ever capture the completeness of extinction. Although I’m capable as a human of knowing of this fate, I’m not really capable of fully appreciating it. Stillness does not reverberate with meaning. Silence is not a home. Even if I am better, or worse, because I recognize the crumbling, I cannot hold those ways of being long. It all comes to pass.

Crumbling seems to be my birthright. It is a more faithful companion than any I might have thought I knew. There is only a brief moment of astonishment and grief, then it all crumbles.

I am bereft, feeling the loss, in my friends losing loved ones, in my own losses, in the steady drumbeat of grief around me, in the passing of formative events. Crumbling seems to highlight to me what is briefly important, before it too passes beyond my reach. I don’t know if it is a curse or a blessing, perhaps its both, but I know for sure, it brings my wonder up to a resonating, one could say quivering, uncertainty. Crumbling gets me.

A Perfect Blunder

Every once in a while, I have a discussion with someone, which veers off into territory, which surprises and delights me. This one, contained a story. I’ll repeat that story here, as best I can, because it illustrates to me, the actions of an ineffable and largely unknown power, that works to use each of us, in ways we seldom recognize and enjoy. 

It all revolved around blundering, or as my friend said early on in our interaction, “making terrible mistakes.” We had a little laugh when I suggested that she should be congratulated for failing so well. To illustrate her bad feelings, and to perhaps offset my irreverent attitude, she told me what had happened. I’m glad she did. Now, I’ll tell it to you.

She is about to be 80. Like many of us old people, some of her long-time friends are dying. In this case, it is a man she has known for 50 years or more. His wife — also a friend — wanted to keep his illness a secret. She, the wife, wasn’t yet ready to face the end of his life. Mistakenly, or so she thought at the time, my friend let the cat out of the bag, by revealing to another acquaintance, that it looked like this man was dying. 

This acquaintance, just happened to be part of the tight-knit community of artists that this man was an esteemed member of. It wasn’t long before the word of his impending death got around in his community. About that time, while visiting, my friend heard the wife get a call, that revealed to this  overwhelmed spouse, that everyone in the community knew her husband was dying. The wife didn’t appreciate the community’s awareness.  She flew into a hateful rage. At the woman she thought had disclosed the precious truth of her husband’s impending demise.

The irony for my friend was that she knew that, she herself, had been the one who had inadvertently disclosed the truth. She reported to me the shame she felt as she listened to her friend — the bereaved spouse’s tirade of hate and anger, directed at an innocent acquaintance. My friend couldn’t reveal this new truth, and had to sit and hear all the vituperative language aimed at her innocent acquaintance. This was a moment of deep chagrin for my friend — and the irony of it, required her to look at herself.

This turned out to be part of the perfection of this particular blunder. She realized that this was a moment when she had to befriend and forgive herself. It was only during recounting the story to me, that she realized, that she had managed to hold herself with compassion.

Even more perfectly, I realized later, she had assisted in informing the man’s community of their impending loss, so that they could honor him, and take care of their hearts. The wife, I’m sure well intended, couldn’t inform his community, because she was too overwhelmed by his illness, and didn’t want his death to find purchase in anyone’s mind. She couldn’t deal with her husband’s upcoming death, and would never have knowingly let anyone else.

Through my friends blunder, she had become more knowingly self-compassionate, and provided a community of others a chance to love a beloved member of their circle. It was an exquisite error. And it reveals a deeper, even more ephemeral truth that is poorly recognized in this world of personal responsibility. Spirit acts through us, sometimes deviating from our well-worn manners, and embarrassingly taking over, to do things that we wouldn’t dream of.

Upon hearing this story, I invited my friend to join the Blunder Brothers. She retorted, could a woman be a brother? Of course, I responded, calling ourselves ‘brothers’ just reveals how badly, and usually, we blunder. The truth is, Spirit, The Great Mystery, determines who gets in, and by what egregious and miraculous route.

With this story in mind, I want to invite you to consider that some of your best mistakes, the one’s you won’t forgive yourself for, might just be your passport into The Blunder Buddies.

Happiness Is A Choice

I’m a somewhat lugubrious guy. The state of the world has tended to leave me feeling on edge and uncertain. Even though I am daily impressed by the miraculousness of life, I have a certain doubt about my being happy in the face of so much suffering. I feel some heart-breaking complicity. None of these feelings are rational, but they never-the-less invade my equilibrium, and affect my pleasure about being here. So, you probably can imagine how uncertain I was, when I opened John Leland’s book entitled, Happiness Is A Choice You Make. I was prepared for another New Age bromide.

John had gripped my attention with his sub-title. He promised that he was    reporting the results of spending a year with the “oldest old.” Their voices mattered to me. His writing floored and chastened me. Now I can’t recommend this book enough. You see, I found wisdom in the natural creativity of elders, who were living with the usual difficulties of getting old. There is nothing panaceac about the lives of the six old (85 to 92 years of age) people he chronicled. Physical ailments, isolation, alienation, immobility, and the insult of cultural irrelevance haunted each of them. They were typical old people, who each had achieved happinessnot despite the difficulties of aging, but because of them.

As I read the variety of challenges they each faced, I came up against the hard lives of the old folks I know. Broken bodies, with wandering minds, hapless, unbalanced and falling — they created within themselves a way to enjoy what remained after the losses that came with life. That impressed and heartened me. They found in the present (so they didn’t have to remember anything) a way to enjoy whatever came their way. In the end, their love of life, and amazement before it, overcame the many challenges that living thrust upon each of them.

The book is well written, it presents a sober look into the lives of the oldest of us. But most importantly, it reveals the incredible happiness that comes from being human in the face of so much uncertainty and vulnerability. Happiness is a choice, a uniquely made attitude, derived from living intensely within the cauldron of life. Amazingly, what cripples and reduces us, also provides the little blessings, which make life surprisingly delicious.

There is no formula, no well-worn path, no way of predicting this non-rational joy, but it exists anyway. Having the good fortune to get old seems to help, but it is what one does with that piece of luck that seems to ensure the joyful outcome. Interestingly, the book reports that research on aged brains (through fMRI) shows that they are like the brains of life-long meditators. They have the benefit of a kind of natural mindfulness. Still, joy is not guaranteed. Happiness is idiosyncratic, it is something that is personal, existing in the relationship between any particular human heart and the deep mystery behind existence.

Knowing happiness is possible —and that it comes through Life and not despite it — is so freeing. It is not a condition of the world. Happiness is more durable than that. It lives in a place beyond the world, beyond the sadness of the way we treat each other, beyond even the way we treat the miracle of life itself. It is nestled within us, as a potential, unleashed by our own availability. Choosing it — is choosing it all — life and death, hardship and joy, evolution and the grace built into each moment.

Rapturous Difficulties

I have a friend, an older wiser man than I, who starts out things he says by making the following disclaimer,  “I don’t know jack shit about what I’m talking about.” Neither, do I. Brain-damage, however, lets me go into areas I know to little about, and where angels fear to tread.  This is one of them.

A few days ago a friend sent me a list of all the things he is grateful for. It was a beautiful list including things like; a long-term marriage, two incredible kids, a magnificent home. He had so much to be grateful for, that he actually worried that at age 50, he might have already lived a full life, and might not have more. It was amazing how rich with gratitude his life was, and how much he knew he benefited.

That evening, as I was going to sleep, I found myself thinking about him, and his list of gratitudes. I was surprised. To my astonishment, I found myself uneasy with his list. Something was missing. After a great deal of reflection, and some hours of wakefulness, I discovered what it was. There was nothing on his list that expressed gratitude for hardships.

The darkness created me. Suffering did more to teach me than anything. What I had no control of, and played no intentional part in, did more to shape me than most everything else. It was my life’s twists, the turns I didn’t expect, that tested me, and taught me my worth. These things too, I am grateful for, perhaps all the more, because they were the work of providence. I grew in ways I did not intend, but never-the-less benefited from.

It is this, the dark work of the invisible hands, the ones that trimmed my sails, and cast me into unknown oceans I would have never have knowingly sailed, that fiercely graced me — pulling me into a form unexpected — that I am humbled by, and most grateful for. I was thrust beyond myself, forced to deal with things that existed way beyond my control. 

These hardships, my stroke, the failed marriages, the potential I didn’t actualize, these did more to educate and sensitize me than any of my successes. It was a dark God, the cursed one— who interrupted my plans, asking what seemed impossible of me — that lead me home. My life, I have come to know, is not my life, it is Life’s life, and this is what I am most grateful for now: the difficulties that have shaped me.

I am more thoroughly human, because Life wrung the hubris out of me, making me more humble than I would have ever been if left to my own devices. I now walk (roll) with the weight of vulnerability and grace always haunting me, reminding me how quickly things can turn, and forcing me to recognize this small, but somehow exalted place I get to inhabit for a while.

The difficulty, as undesirable as it is, seems to make it all more real.  The hardships have graced me with a certain awareness of how “Lucky” I truly am. I wouldn’t have chosen what has brought out the best in me. But, I can be grateful, for that churlish wise one, loved me enough, to add hurt and disappointment to my depths.

Post Traumatic Growth

This is disturbing. So much so, that I had a hard time sleeping last night. In a moment you’ll know why. I hope you are disturbed too.

I imagined, as I was preparing to write, that I might entitle this piece “Uncommon Sense.” But, I’ve already written something with that title. I was drawn to that way of entitling this missive, because it was a play on Thomas Paine’s revolution inducing essay, “Common Sense.” I realized last night that what is here is revolutionary. Here’s why.

This line of thought started when I was watching the Newshour on PBS. In a feature segment called “In My Humble Opinion,” a guest addressed trauma. She said essentially that trauma survivors were more traumatized by the reactions of the ones around them. By being treated as damaged by their loved ones, they came to believe themselves damaged, and to correspondingly suffer like they were. The power of social belief was so great it piled insurmountable hurt upon them. Only those intact enough, within themselves, had any immunity to these social views.

She was not traumatized, although she had been through two wars in Africa, and had come to America as a black woman. She was solid enough to speak out on TV, about what appeared to her, as a powerfully defining and painful social force. Only by defining herself, had she resisted becoming the quivering survivor of harrowing events, defined (by herself and others) as forever tainted by what she had been through. Her support system was prepared to provide her with a life sentence, as someone traumatized. She was savvy enough to know that form of help didn’t help, in fact, it could hurt her, if she let it.

Thank heavens she went beyond conventional practices, and made her voice heard. She named our social belief structure for the disabling agent it sometimes is. There are people walking around now, who are wearing the scars of these misbegotten assumptions. You may be one of them.

I consider knowing this disturbing, because I can see the same thing happening to old people. The societal assumption is that the old person is headed down hill in an inevitable decline. There seems to be an invisible funnel, which envisions old people headed down, into the narrowing end. Ageist beliefs end up channeling most of the elderly into diminishment. A few, intact enough to resist, exhibit post-traumatic growth and demonstrate the realization that the funnel is actually the other way round. Aging unleashes unimagined potential. They grow until they dissolve into a greater way of being.

Social beliefs, are disabling, far more so, than disturbing events. This is a painful truth, one that is truly traumatizing. Old people thrive when they escape the debilitating assumptions of common ignorance. Mass mind — the beliefs that define a culture — evoke a reality that makes post-traumatic growth difficult, but not impossible. The ones who have escaped, say more about themselves than us, but as a minority, they say enough about us, to be revolutionary wisdom.

Graying challenges us — to go beyond the traumatizing beliefs of a culture, mad with the assumptions of adulthood—and to become, not the discarded drone, but a real human being. The old beliefs don’t help. But, there are fresh assumptions, even not knowing, that offer a child-like new beginning, and mesmerizing new potentials. Thanks to post-traumatic growth, a new enchanted world is becoming more obvious.

I hope, that knowing of the power of collective ignorance, disturbs you, it does me.

Augmented Reality

I’m always fascinated by the latest consumer technology. So, I’ve been watching what’s being developed. Recently, along with the virtual reality fad, has come something short of that, called augmented reality. Augmented reality (or AR) is being used to sell quasi-experiences, to people looking for cars, vacations, or real estate. As is my bent, I want to use this missive to suggest that there is something totally organic, and very much a part of regular human-life, that augments reality naturally.

For a longtime I’ve had the prejudice that we should be devoting our human energy to internal development, rather than to things that only reinforce our over reliance on externalities. In other words, I have reason to believe that there is a whole lot more investment in techno-toys, which ostensibly increase our skills and connectivity, than there is investment in bringing out our inner capabilities. We could connect so much more deeply and efficiently if we would just invest in our own selves.

Luckily, Life has already done much of this for us. People often don’t know this, so every now and then, I feel aroused to remind us of what Life has already endowed us with. There is a kind of augmented awareness available to all of us.  It isn’t a very easy one, nor do we have complete control over it, but it is elegantly folded into our existence.

I’m talking about an aspect of human life that opens us up and changes reality. Organically, no drugs, or other products, involved. There is an awesome aspect of living that makes everything more vivid and precious.  I’m talking about what happens to us when we feel that our lives are sufficiently threatened. When Life gets adequately rough, and we experience existential vulnerability, the awareness of how fragile we are. Then Life also opens up — and becomes incredible.

This state, which I call existential vulnerability, augments reality, and brings out the meaning inherent in existing.  This kind of vulnerability coaxes out of us the most human qualities. This is the kind of vulnerability that verifies the words of Hafiz, “death is a favor to us.”

Being excruciatingly aware of how momentary and transient our lives are — is extremely clarifying — it reveals just how precious and fragile this life is. Life takes on a glow that goes way beyond understanding.

It appears to me, that the vulnerability that arises in response to existential threat, heightens awareness, and infuses all things with a kind of benign and mysterious aura. To me, this is the true augmented reality — it has a kind of mystic familiarity that calms and reassures.

In some twist of fate, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become much more aware of how the worst of times, the eras where I’ve experienced the kind of fragility and existential vulnerability of being on the edge, are also some of the best, most formative, times in my life.

Aging has lead to a reversal in my thinking, The worst times in my life have been the best. Hardship brought out of me qualities I would never have volunteered to acquire, and I learned a lot more about being human than I thought possible. Life augmented my sense of reality.

There is another thing aging has done for me. Again, organically, aging by bringing me closer to death, has increased my vulnerability and awareness. I am going down, but strangely, I am also going up. Life is breaking me down, teaching me what vulnerability is, putting me rudely in touch with my own fragility, and simultaneously, augmenting reality.

Exposure

I don’t expect anyone to read very far in this one. Here’s why. Its about disappointment and hopelessness. I remember a time just months after I had my stroke, years before I realized how “lucky” I am. I had moved out of my country home, a dome house on 3 wooded acres. I was living alone for the first time in years. I was deep in grief, in fact, I was never sure what I was grieving, the loss of my marriage, family, country home, health, or career. It all went so quickly.

Amazingly, I could walk then, even drive. I was so bereft that I sought out a therapist, I needed someone to talk with, someone who could help me put myself back together again. Surprisingly, I found someone who was a stroke survivor, someone who knew something of what I was facing. Little did I know, my luck was already operating. I went to work with her, only to find that her regard for me, manifested through her puncturing my hope. Each visit she made clear to me, that despite my attachment to returning to some version of normalcy, that, that was not likely. Gradually, I gave up any notion I had about returning to anything like I had been.

She was ruthless and skilled. I went a way from each session more bereft, and with a greater recognition of my situation. And, that was before the rare brain syndrome came on. Then, over a four-year period, I lost a whole lot more of the capabilities I had left, including any hope of surviving. It was the hopelessness of my situation, which brought about the transformation of my consciousness.

That is what this missive is about; the unsavory nature of what transformed me. There is no sugar coating it. I had to give my hope up, not because it was a good idea, but because I had to. I was on the way out. So it looked — hope for recovery was gone — I lived like a terminal patient. I didn’t know when my time was coming, but I knew it was. Later, I lost more than my physical functioning. I was not my body, nor was I my hopes, dreams, or aspirations. In the end, I was reduced to a quivering mass of helpless flesh.

Living to reflect upon that time at death’s doorstep, I have come to realize that hope, the illusion of control, and thinking I know anything, are completely foolish. I had to be at the end of the rope given to me, to get that none of the presumed protections like hope, faith, or love, really serve —when Life knocks, and asks for everything. I became aware of how vulnerable we humans are. I didn’t like knowing it then, and I don’t like knowing it now. Luckily, Life forced me to know it, to feel vividly just how raw and vulnerable I am — we all are. I didn’t know it till later, but that knowing, about how vulnerable we all are, set me free.

Recently, I have been dwelling with David Whyte’s exhortation to elders to “inhabit our vulnerability.”  Despite my experience, I imagined that David was advising we elders to try to make ourselves vulnerable. That way we are more likely to experience and communicate the wisdom of Life. Now instead, I realize that that vulnerability is a given — it just is— because we humans exist, we participate in the if-i-ness and uncertainty of Creation. I am just as vulnerable now as I ever have been.

That doesn’t reassure me, nor does it make my life easier, but it does free me from the mirages of my attachments to hope and believing. These things have the effect of closing me down, of obscuring the real miracle I get to live within. I am now much more caught-up in the moment, sensitized by what I’ve been through — more existentially open and vulnerable. Life comes to, and through me, in amazingly complex and simple ways.

Giving up hope was essential for me (it wasn’t voluntary), I suffered complete exposure, and I have since, realized how genuinely “lucky” I am.  May you know hopelessness, not knowing, and the loss of control, in your aging process — may you experience such exposure — — so you can be amongst the happy ones.