Life

I am a human being. My life is messy, just like everybody else's. I am an unusual human because of what I experienced. Life selected me for a rather difficult blessing. My life was turned upside down by a surge of blood and a rare brain syndrome. I have never recovered from those losses, and to this day I am thankful. You see,  I was introduced to a different way of seeing things through that hellish experience. So much so, that by and large people don't really get how transformative this experience really was. I am writing this piece to try once more to give voice to what happened.

There is a very humbling reality that awaits us all. Death is easy, but getting there isn't. Being stripped of everything that one once relied upon for an identity is earth-rattling. It's what happens as one is being reduced. Ripening holds this very frightening aspect. As life drains away,  it imparts a strange liberation. At least it did for me. For once, I knew what I was doing here, in this twisted and complex reality, discovering who I was, and learning about the real value of these precious relationships. I disappeared. Extinguished by Life, only to become more fully Life's.

There is no way to capture with words the confusing whirlpool of sensation that came along with the experience of being taken apart and put back together again. I died, but I didn't die. My life ended, and Life's life took over. Not completely, but enough so that what is human in me is only a part of what remains. There were no super powers, no great insight, no spiritual abilities, just a throbbing sensitivity. I've been trying to figure out what's happened ever since.

In some strange way I can feel people. I can't read minds, I don't get to know someone's history or intentions, instead I seem to be able to feel their sincerity, and the strength/fragility of their emotional heart. I was sensitized by the hardship I went through, introduced, I believe, to some of the depth of the human heart. I don't believe I was carried away, instead I was carried in. Inside, I have been introduced to some of the human potential that is ours by virtue of our intimate connection with Nature.

To my particular form of restrained joy, in my suffering, I got to know that we may assume that we humans have stumbled badly and neglected our relationship with Life, but it hasn't forgotten us. That realization, that Life continues to hold us, in all of our rushing insensitivity, has made being unbalanced and unable to walk more than worthwhile. I am "Lucky" because I get to live with an overall awareness that Life has my back. The pleasure I feel goes deeper, I also get to know this is true for everybody else too.

I can't prove it. I don't even want to. This is a pleasure each of us needs to discover for ourselves. There is something utterly human about our need to discover things for ourselves. This is one of the things I admire the most about we humans. Yet, somehow Life pitches in, making the discovery feel completely autonomous while simultaneously helping. There is a secret agent at our backs! I appreciate the help, it has enriched my life, and lately, as I'm getting older, reenchanted this life.

Now, I live the connected life. I'm not used to it, thus I'm not very good at it. But, I'm getting better. In the meantime, I'm learning how to love what's right there in front of me, knowing somehow that Life put it (them) there for me to discover. This life has become something else, something beyond my making, something I get to wake up to each day. And, you know what's really cool, I have discovered this is a significant part of what old age is about. Eldering seems to be about discovering the help inside. Wow!

Now, I get to have the mixed, and sensitizing experience of realizing that not everyone knows how blessed we are. I don't have a way of integrating the way we humans are making so much trouble for each other. I feel plenty of grief about that. There is an aggravating and mysterious hurt associated with this facet of life. But, this grief is tempered, and becomes more connective, when I remember Life is on the scene. I am pleased to be old enough now to appreciate it all.

l/d