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!