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.

 

 

 

  

Exposure

 

Is being here— alive that is — anything else! At every moment — masked or unmasked, Ukrainian or not, air breathers, secret deniers, perpetual smilers — we are always at risk. The real challenge of being, is to live with the vulnerability of knowing that each moment everything could change. Everything teeters! Impermanence rules. Life evaporates, oh so quickly. Everything, each of us, our children, hopes, satisfactions, fears and delights — all go into an invisible black hole, never to be seen again. Our fate is to surely to not exist as thoroughly as we do exist.

 

Out of that reality — of the pure momentariness of our being — comes the feeling of being exposed. It isn’t just a fear of catching a lethal disease, or of being short of liquid assets, or not having enough to feed your family. It is one of the primary conditions of existing. Each of us has to face the fact, that we came to the party to discover this is it. Soon, it will be over.

 

I don’t know what that means. It is probable that you don’t either. All we know is that there is an inevitability to the trajectory we are on. We have no idea what form of exposure is going to do us in. We just know it will be something. All of us, to the maximum degree, are exposed, all of the time.

 

I’d like to think I can’t live with that awareness. Whereas, the truth is, I do live with it. I keep it dimly tucked-away in the deep recesses of my mind. I don’t let myself often dwell on this fact of my existence. I prefer to believe I haven’t really noticed. I am here for the course — whatever that is? In the meantime, I’ll just pretend I’m immune.

 

Sometimes, I have a breakdown. I feel vulnerable. I get scared. I realize that I live is a house of cards, that could come tumbling down at any moment. For a while, it gets pretty hard to breath, but then it occurs to me, that this isn’t that moment. But for some reason, far beyond my station in Life to know about, I feel more acutely than I would like, just how exposed I am. I’ve wandered into the place of no return.

 

Loneliness accompanies the realization of exposure. No one else can make being exposed any less. Each of us makes our own dead-end canyon. Unknowingly. The only way out is the way in. And, there is only room for one.

 

Today, I might wonder what this sets up, how does this serve the Universe, does it someway make me more human, compassionate, caring? I don’t know. I can’t even conjecture. But none of my reflections change anything. I still feel shaken by my sense of exposure. Somehow, it seems, as if I am meant to live with being exposed. Is that a privilege, or a curse? Or both?

 

All I really know for sure, is that my current state of panic looks like I look today. Sometimes flailing can look creative. I pretend to have something together, look somewhat calm, am semi-coherent, and pass, but the truth is, I am drowning here. Drowning seems to be what I am capable of. I can go down, into the depths, the obscure future, with the best of them.

 

There isn’t any end to this line of thought. The mystery of this existence is really impenetrable.  Conjecture isn’t really a waste of time — we each seem to go down in our own way — it helps me wriggle as I go down. This is my own form of overwhelmed dance. This, and then, my way of responding momentarily to the fact that I, and everything and everybody I know, are so quickly passing.

 

I’d say good-bye, but I’m not really sure I said hello. We just have this moment, when whizzing by each other, when we get to decide whether we are going to pretend we are not drowning, or going to greet each other, as unique snowflakes passing in a quiet snowstorm. Fall well, whatever that means.

 

 

 

 

Ridiculous Courage

One willing heart can’t stop a war.

One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.

And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,

I tell myself what’s the use of trying?

But today, the invitation is clear:

to be ridiculously courageous in love.

 

                                                                     Rosemerry Trommer

 

 

There is a little bit of this wild exuberance inside each of us. The issue is unleashing it. Letting it go, is like being willing to bleed. A heart sometimes has to weep. Tears and blood are artifacts of being open. They mark the territory of passion and healing. They express the nature of compassion, heartbreak, and wild unselfconscious love. Love that is blinded, by being crazed with connection. That kind of love grows, when it flows out into hurt places.

 

Rosemerry is a good poetess, I recommend her. In this case, she is addressing a heart ache I hear everywhere, but especially from the old. It comes in the form of a question. What can I do to minimize the damage being done by the war in Ukraine, the polarization taking place in our politics, the pandemic, inequality, and the warming of our planet? 

 

It is our fate to live in this dangerous and tumultuous time. How do we respond to it?

 

This is an unprecedented era. None of our ancestors ever faced this kind of existential uncertainty. Sure, there were animal powers to fear, and wars which defined our history, famines and droughts, but never before now, have our actions become so dangerous, that we ourselves are the greatest fear we face. In so many ways, we know we humans are culpable for great uncertainty. Can we survive ourselves?

 

This is an open question. The jury is still out. Some unforeseen development may give us more time. It may be too late. No one knows what is going to happen, or when. Living, now incorporates this profound uncertainty. We all live with an edginess that cuts deep into our well-being, and asks us to be human in unimaginable ways.

 

The Earth is in a spin. Human culture is at risk. Evolution is pressing. All of this is happening way beyond the reach of we individuals. We see it, we know it, we are affected by it — and it largely is beyond each of us. Rosemerry — bless her soul — suggests that we do what we can. In a world that has spun beyond caring, let us do the ridiculous, and open our hearts and care anyway. 

 

Opening the heart now won’t change the world, but it will change you. Running up against all the insensitive blockages that we humans are capable of, hones the heart, and rouses the soul, making it possible for one to love with abandon. That ridiculous courage comes from within, and affirms itself.  

 

Maybe, that is what we are here for. To find the bit of light that still prevails, inside, and to let it shine.