Grief by Lucky

A few evenings ago, I was sitting with a group and we were exploring the many losses we have experienced. Fear and sadness were palpable in the room. It dawned on me as the conversation went on that grief was a major part of what we were experiencing. Grief seemed to me to be a piece of all of the stories of loss and all the fears of getting older. Life is changing us. We are being reduced. This is a painful, uncertain process. Even though there are those amongst us who accept being reduced and see it as a natural gift and expression of Life, the process is unpredictable and filled with uncertainty. I didn’t know it then, but the sharing of these losses and this grief set me thinking and has brought me to this point.

I think grief is an essential component of facing the Mystery that seems to underlie all of existence. I am beginning to realize that I am not really letting the unknown into my life if I am not living with grief. This is not a moral imperative. It is an experience. I exist; I know not why. I have a life; I wonder about its purpose. I feel things, sometimes without even a sense of what or why. I care, and I can never be sure of where caring is going to take me. I get to live and die with that reality. Essentially I’m adrift in a big ocean of unknowing. Sometimes this thrills me; sometimes I’m overwhelmed.

In these recent moments, I’m feeling grief. And more specifically, I’m feeling how grief is always with me and always will be. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel sad or depressed about this. This is a humbling realization. It brings home to me, once again, the recognition I have about my existence. This life I hold so dear is really a product of something I cannot fathom. I am old enough now that I can let in that I don’t know as much as I think I do. That means I get to live with Mystery surrounding me in everything I do and every encounter I have.

Mystery thrills and grieves me. What can I possibly say to a friend who is sensing in her husband’s memory loss that she is losing him?  I care about what she is feeling, but I don’t really know how to respond. I know she has already lost him. I know he never was hers’ to begin with. I know all of this is breaking her heart. I know I respect her because somewhere inside her knows this and has chosen to love him anyway. The whole thing unfolds, and I feel grief as a part of how it all touches me with so much poignancy and terrible beauty.

Grief is seeping into my daily awareness. I am used to talking about having grief days as if they indicated something of the tragi-comedic quality of my disabled existence. Little did I know that grief days were going to become grief years, and that my disabled state was related to the human condition. Grief is just a part of my day-to-day happiness about the privilege of my life.

Am I big enough to contain that much complexity? I don’t know. But the Universe seems to be. Grieving puts me in touch with some enormity, which my life seems to serve. I am honored as I am shaking. Grief isn’t sadness about being here in the vale of tears. It is my assent, my willingness to lean into it all, constructed so paradoxically, and to be torn open by its magnificence.

I am Lucky because this realization is slowly descending upon me and not because of all the goodies that were shoveled my way when I was torn apart. Life asks a whole lot from us. Humankind sits in a very interesting place in Creation. I don’t know if we have what it takes to be here long but wow, what an incredible grace period we are in! I get to live my share of it out. And I get to be immersed in the daily torturous/enlightening drama of it — at least as much as I can bear.

I feel grief. It helped me better understand when I heard that the Mayans had only one word for grief and praise. It took awhile for me to begin to grasp their experience.  I had to go through all my cultural and personal assumptions about the poverty of their language, or on the other end of the spectrum, my assumptions about the spiritual superiority of their indigenous ways. I finally got, that grief and praise were both the same passionate exclamation (!) that comes when one feels the enormous complex beauty of this multi-layered existence.

My soul is indigenous to this existence. My homeland is this earth. My family is composed of all the beings who live now, or who have ever lived. I am linked with this earth and each and every one through the amazing grief that presses my heart to take more of the whole thing in.

For a little while I grieve —

I give up my happy, confused,

pained and grateful tears.

I am so lucky!

Grandolescence by Lucky

I was sitting in my wheel chair at the table, eating my breakfast, when unbidden this idea came to me. It was a name. Grandolescence. I had recently started writing about the stages of human life. You know: childhood, adulthood and elderhood. I had commented to myself, when writing about the adolescent shift between childhood and adulthood, that there ought to be awareness of the even more difficult shift between adulthood and elderhood. Then, some days later, the name grandolescence came to me. Suddenly, I realized that the crucial and challenging transition that gave one entrée into elderhood had opened before me. This Slow Lane is dedicated to reflecting upon this natural occurrence, that is so misunderstood, and nevertheless, is so powerful and transforming. 

I felt glad that the name that came to me, seemingly out of the blue, had so much to do with adolescence. I remembered being struck years ago, when I heard someone say old folks where just grey teenagers. Then I thought there was something right about that. But now, I think it is more than right that old folks are like teenagers, but in ways much more worldly. Old people are trying to find their place in a world, which has morphed into something complexly alien. There is a physical awkwardness that comes with less functional bodies, that are suddenly (thankfully) bereft of hormonal surges. But, even more importantly, there is the awkwardness of fitting into a world as strange as the one that appears in later life.  Old folks, like teenagers, are being grown into something—involuntarily.

I also liked the appellation “grand.” There is something marvelous and awe-inspiring about Life carrying one to a stage where it is possible to get a glimpse of the big picture, the grand design of it all. The association with grandparents came immediately to mind too. It seems that in almost every account I know of, wise one’s have been called affectionately ‘grandmother’ or ‘grandfather.’

It seemed ‘grand’ was the right choice to me, because it signified the enormous complexity of this transition, and the magnitude of the change that Life puts us through. It blew my mind that this enormous change had no rite of passage to mark it, nor was it well described by any culture or person that I knew. I was simultaneously despondent and elated.

Grandolescence is the time one spends coming to terms with the actual limitations and possibilities that Life has determined for us. It comes to us inevitably while we are alive, or as we die — usually both. We exercise some choice about facing it, but it is always facing us. It asks us to grow into full, ripe, human beings. Life saves the best for last, or faces us with a stunted existence tied to the past.

Strangely Grandolescence comes wrapped in losses and death — a macabre masquerade — which one must pass through to grasp the gains that this season of Life offers. Hidden within it all, even at the core of one’s being, is an integrative force. This force works despite us, to bring about alignment. Nature is taking us all in.

There is something spectacular about a life course that includes a period of having the childhood, cultural, and personal preferences stripped away. This time, which is marked by loss — is painful — and seems to take away hope (especially hope for the wrong thing).  It drives one deeper within, where one begins to find out the reason for one’s existence.  The journey from doing to being is one of going against the grain of modern culture, and re-claiming the natural aspects of who one is. Grandolescence is a kind of fore-play. No wonder old people tend to be happier. It isn’t because they are so physically well off. It is because there is ecstasy involved with joining more passionately with Life.

Grandolescence is too valuable of a phenomenon to be obscured by prejudice (ageism) and misinterpretation, the presumptions of those who came earlier constructed our notions of what old age is like. Too often younger folks, with their tendency to see only the outside surfaces of aging, have seen it as a time of physical decline. The truth is that there is something going on inside, not easily viewed from the outside, which ennobles the game. Grandolescence takes one there, inside, to the place where the Universe has planted itself.

Grandolescence is my formulation

of a process that I do not own,

can barely describe,

unknowingly depend on,

and cannot direct.

Incredibly, it is Nature at work. I’m just thankful I’m connected enough that while eating my breakfast, ideas like this one can come to me. Even more thrilling, for me, is that I realize that grandolescence is coming to others too.

Elder Activism by Lucky

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy." - Joseph Campbell

An idea came to me this week. It aroused me, with excitement, fear, determination, and wonder. So, I hope I can do an adequate job of exploring and expressing this idea.

My world is changing, as I’m getting older. Things are morphing into new forms. Configurations are occurring to me that I barely understand, and that call to me, to give them a voice. This is one of them, an embryonic awareness, which has come squalling over my horizon, calling for me to soothe it, by considering the change in my reality that it foretells. I am bewildered and beguiled, and I know that if I want to keep open, I’ve got to welcome this guest too.

So here goes.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to what happens to consciousness as we humans age. There are a lot of us now, outliving our ancestors, in greater numbers than ever before. Witnessing, and feeling, this, momentous build-up, has put me in a wondrous state of mind. I think mother-nature is up to something. I can’t shake the feeling that evolution is re-working the human race, putting more emphasis upon the grey fruit of this strange journey — than in the past. So, I’m paying attention, and noticing that old people aren’t all, what they used to be.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that some old folks, I call them elders, seem to see things a lot different than the rest of us. There are many ways this seems true to me, but I want to concentrate on only one now. I don’t know how, or when, this happens, but it seems that some older people develop, what I call, paradoxical awareness. They seem to be more comfortable, and even grow fluent in, bringing the opposites together. An indicator of the onset of this awareness, appears to be the statement, “The more I know, the more I know how little I know,” that comes out of some old folks mouths.

For whatever reason, they have arrived at an experience of the world, that is more complex, mysterious, and unified than many of us have. It isn’t unusual for someone in this state of mind to extol the beauty and miraculousness of the world, and to be equally aware of the horror that mankind has visited upon our planet. For them, the joy of being alive, is deeply rooted in awareness of the world as it is. They seem to exude an equanimity that defies logic.

I noticed this, and sometimes feel myself capable of it. I can feel the world turning, and I have a sense, that despite the deleterious impact of humankind, the miracle of life is here to stay. This thrills and humbles me; it makes me want to spread the vision. I don’t exactly know how to do that, and that’s OK, because I have the sense that evolution, that Life, is already at work changing things. I’m just here to witness and praise the miracle that includes injustice.

I can remember the dark days after my stroke, when I had an undiagnosed brain syndrome, which was slowly stealing my functionality. I was dying. I was angry — so disappointed with Life. The Mystery contained a darkness I didn’t want to know. I didn’t think I could care about a life that cared so little for me, and others who were equally diminished. My face took on, what seemed to be a permanent frown. The abyss ate me. I went down into the darkness, and came out of it barely alive, but aware, that my life had never been mine, and that now, I knew I was Life’s life, and that the darkness is only the light I most fear.

I believe elder activism is being transformed, not by we humans, but by Life. Ageing is bringing about, for some, a change in awareness. This changing awareness is leading to other changes. As I am getting older, I am becoming more aware of my own, and others, hubris. I am less inclined to judge. I am accepting more of my own limitations, and the limitations of others. The world has shown me, how Life moves in strange, unpredictable and inexorable ways.

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking. My activism has been largely based on my reaction to the injustice in the world. My actions followed. I assumed that injustice threatens Life. What I now see is that injustice is in the world as part of the wholeness that is Life. My actions must now incorporate that awareness. It feels right to keep acting, but without my former certainty, and with a more astutely humble reverence for the mysteriousness of Life. My actions will no longer be so much against others. Instead, I think I will be paying closer attention to Life, and dwelling in not knowing instead of certainty. It helps to think that Life is pre-eminent, and knows what it is doing.

Generally, I like ageing. Getting older has its well-documented problems. What it doesn’t have yet, is a well articulated description of its potentials. Along with the losses come gains. The gains aren’t obvious, they haven’t been fully described, but it seems Life is seeing to it, that they are available now, regardless of how well described they are. These same gains are changing the way activism, the love of Life, is being played out. In my view, this is evolution coming through us. It is the Universe doing its activist thing.

*          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *

For more pieces like this, go to  http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com  (2014 on)

To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net

Surrendering Attachment by Lucky

Throughout the years there has been a very special set of guidelines that have informed my work on behalf of consciousness. They have grown me into the person I am. The guidelines, which are called “The Four-fold Way,” are the products of Basque wise woman, Angeles Arrien. Angeles passed on last year, but has left us all with these universal cross-cultural practices. They represent the world’s wisdom. And, they have the capacity to shift consciousness, into subtler, and more poignant, forms of awareness. Each is a deep and compelling practice, which will with time, reveal the underbelly and glory of reality.

The Four-fold way is composed of the easily remembered guidelines  “Show Up,” “Pay Attention,” “Tell the Truth,” and “Surrender Attachment To Outcome.” They represent truly multi-use guidance.

I’m writing about them today, because I want to focus upon the last of them. I am finding special relevance, and huge difficulty, with the last one, surrender attachment to outcome. This guideline has always been the most reliable, and hardest to practice, for me. I think I especially need it now, to take me deeper, as I am ageing, and experiencing so much loss.

I have learned how important it is for me to let go of my expectations, particularly in my relationships, but now I have entered old age, and I am realizing that I have to let go of everything.

I have, with the help of the perspective, provided by this guideline, settled myself down a lot. Change — the impermanence that is everywhere — tends to throw me less often. But, as I face the loss of energy, functionality, loved ones, and even self-assumptions, that comes with age, I find I chafe more, even with this good reminder. Grief, seems to be becoming a regular emotional feature of my life now. Letting go isn’t just a practice, it is a choice-less experience that seems to be ushering me toward the inevitable. There is relief in knowing death is approaching. I’m not too worried about that, I’m anticipating a kind of solving justice, with no more disabilities.

Instead, what I find difficult is, that I am learning as I age, what is really important. And, those things, which have come into focus so recently — pass so quickly. I barely have a chance to take hold before I have to let go. I used to hear Johnny Cash sing, “now that I am old enough to finally live, I’m old enough to die.” The poignancy of that reality is kicking my butt. Letting go, surrendering attachment to outcome, has taken on a new level of meaning, and is delivering me to a new, deeply poignant reality.

I am still practicing surrendering, and I’m getting more and more into the world’s creation myths that feature a creation deity who’s tears are the source of all things. It seems that existing is a grievous thing (I know it is also a miracle) because it inevitably means dying. Creation and destruction, birth and death, surrender and attachment are all paradoxical parts of this great Mystery, and they take my breath away, as they ask me to be human. I sometimes flounder. And that is when that particular guideline helps me the most. When I have occasion to remember, surrender attachment, I recall that other humans came this way, and foundered more wisely on these same paradoxical shoals, alive with grief and wonder, compassionately trying to take it all in, and becoming more broken down and alive along the way.

I haven’t been able to reconcile surrendering attachment with my desire to live yet. I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t know what ripening has in store for me. But, I find that I am ever thankful that Angie found the wherewithal to give this aspect of human experience, such an elegant, and abbreviated wording — now as I stumble across it, I become ever so slightly more humanized.

Ageing seems to mean placing more emphasis upon surrendering. I prefer to think the powers that be are essentializing me, getting me ready, for the final stripping that is simultaneously a birth into a new, and hopefully wiser, form. I am letting go, because I have to, not because I’m good at it, but I am getting softened up, hopefully becoming more malleable, and slowly fading, into I don’t know what. I don’t know exactly why, but I trust being human, existing in this bittersweet world, and waiting for meaning to ripen into greater realization.

The Universe is grinding me down. I am learning to surrender. I don’t know much more than that. I don’t know how to account for it, but I feel grateful. Life has made me up, breathed life into me, and exposed me to grandeur. The trip seems to come with a very exacting price tag, but I think I might have paid it anyway. Surrendering seems to be the price/wonder of this trip.

*          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *

For more pieces like this, go to  http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com  (2014 on)

To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net