Elder Absent-Mindedness

This is what paradoxical awareness does.

It’s already nearly November, the year has just flown by. My life, this gift from Mystery, has gone by so fast. Now I’m getting old, and I’m just beginning to get why I might be here. At the same time, I’ve waited a painfully long slow slog coming to some kind of recognition of what I am, what we all are. There have been eras of heartache, loss, and wondering, that passed so slowly that I thought they would never end. “This too shall pass,” was a speedy way of saying this might last awhile. I live in a world that is going faster than I want, and slower than I can bear. Both are happening, bewilderingly, at once.

I’m old enough now, that I’m starting to penetrate the fog of rushing business I kept myself (and my world) under control with, and I feel like a toddler walking on the freeway. It seems like everything is zooming by me. It took me this long to show up, and I am about to die. Old age is a human accelerator guaranteed to get me up to a speed up to where I can pop out of this body. Old age is an eternity of slowing down that makes me forget the little stuff in favor of what matters. I’m dizzy from going too fast/slow, I can hardly tell the difference anymore.  The moment is looking pretty good right now.

I am much more facile with my feelings now. What used to take me forever to notice, and express, now comes in little intense bursts. Wake-up calls that arouse me, leave me shaken, and more vulnerable than I ever knew. I like feeling this alive, and this near death. I want to walk through it all like I’m in some unanticipated cathedral, and I find myself running for my life. It is uncanny — feeling how grief and praise intermingle in my body — I feel lighter when I’m swept before a wave of grief, and heavier if I keep my head above the storm surge.

My relationships have a patina of wonder to them now. I am more connected and more alone than I have ever been. I know that the more I know someone, the more wonder and uncertainty about who they are haunts and freshens what transpires between us. I also know that my relationship within, determines the depth of my relationship with others. And, as the mystery of myself grows, so my sense of unknowing wonder increases. In some strange way, getting better acquainted with others, is acquainting me more with myself. The boundary between self and other is becoming both more solid and more permeable.

I am drowning in a sea of conflicting sensations. Bereft, at the turn of political events, and elated, about the unifying response to that encroaching darkness. I’m so close to others, and yet so far away. Laughter and sobs intermingle, defining my grief and my orgasms. Living seems to be a form of dying. I get away with nothing, and yet I feel supported. The days go by, in accelerating patterns, but kaliedescopically broken and slow. I want this life to add up to something, and it is filled with nothingness. I am tossed by the waves, and enjoy a head wind, all carrying me beyond myself into some other alien being. Life has tricked me into thinking it matters, but I have no idea how. Openness, flexibility, and unknowing, seem to be my fate, yet I like to know what’s going on.

This feeling of being connected, and in the flow, is a strangely solitary experience.  I feel the other humans around me like a star feels the other stars that surround it. The distances in an expanding Universe, are growing. The more I subjectively link with someone the more I notice how far away they actually are. The void has its binding power. I am relaxing, knowing that quicksand is my fate.  All of these tricky sensations tell me I’m on course, but my trajectory is carrying me beyond any gravitational pull I know.

Freedom dominates my attention now, but it seems to mean moving into a larger unknown space. It is wonderfully unbounded and terrifyingly unrecognizable. I am being drawn into a vast unknowing, just as I have learned how to be here. Life is pushing me to be more, as it is making me less. I am at the mercy of the unknown, at just the moment when wisdom is supposed to be dawning in me.

Maybe, all of these cross currents make of wisdom, not something you have, rather something that has you.