Occupy — by Lucky

I’ve been watching with hope, amazement and a measure of curiosity this thing called the Occupy movement. No one, it seems, really knows what is happening. As Dylan sang in, “The Times They Are A Changing,” “ the wheel is still in spin.” I don’t have the magic that might be required to capture the meaning of this timely movement, but I do have the desire, and the audacity, to give this moment words.

Occupy seems to be a new, refreshing phenomenon. The focus upon economic justice, the non-heirarchical way of operating, and the radically democratic impulse, all seems to give hope to those who would speak truth to power. I sense a social movement away from the rut of the past. I also am aware that what I see are just the outside manifestations of a movement, that Occupy has an inside dimension. It is this, the inner aspect of Occupy, which I want to explore.

I have heard, and seen, placards which say, “Occupy the Heart!,” or, “Occupy Your Self!,” and I wonder at these words, these sentiments. What could it be, that joins these ideas with a demand for economic and social justice? What is coming to the fore, in this time of instability, uncertainty and economic hardship? I sense that the 1%, that is suspected of having too much of everything, doesn’t have much heart, or self. What gives? What is really at play?

I can’t claim to know.  I can only ponder. Like everyone else, I add my voice to those calling for a new social compact, a new more humane arrangement, one that makes room for genuine caring. This caring, it seems to me, starts within, and that is why I’m paying so much attention to the inner landscape of the Occupy movement. You see, if I’m going to be associated with picketing, with any kind of movement, then I want it to promote actual change, and I live with the prejudice that real change occurs from the inside out.

What does it mean to occupy your self? What does it take to free your self, enough to be involved in freeing someone else? Speaking as a psychologist, this question is relevant to this moment, if there is going to be any kind of historical change. Speaking as an active observer of culture I’m looking for more depth rather than a quick fix. The refusal to bow to the media, and those others who pressure for a simple message, is reassuring.

 “Occupy Your Self,” that sounds right, but what does it mean?

I don’t know what it means to you, or anyone else, but to me, it means something about being comfortable in your own skin. There are a lot of dimensions to that comfort. There is the refusal to use another (in any capacity). There is the tendency to make others responsible for your well-being. And, on a more positive note, there is a capacity to responsibly place the self vulnerably in the hands of another.

Capitalism isn’t just exploitation of the masses. It is also capitalizing on our own internal resources (including development). I have found that the tendency to be outer-directed, and to use others (capitalize on them), is related to exploitation of the self, to an anti-democratic desire for power.

For me, “Occupy the Self” means placing an encampment within. It means staying put, not being run-off by the authorities, the beneficiaries of a self-imposed system that is corrupt. It is the effort to know fully, to get educated about, the tyranny perpetrated inside. It is having general assemblies and letting minority voices be heard. It means demonstrating, by drawing attention to, the practices that diminish humanity. Occupying the self seems like a prerequisite to true justice. Such a form of occupation seems like a rare, and welcome, form of activism.

The democratic impulse, it seems to me, is an expression of the self. We are only as free as “we the people” can tolerate. That means, like the oxygen mask that appears in a crisis on a plane, it has to be fixed on one’s self, before anyone else can be helped. Re-ordering economic reality means re-aligning our values, it means re-dreaming the American dream. I think this is a deeply personal process that really requires a re-defining of the self. For this to happen it would be helpful if we had a Self-September, or something, that was as news worthy as Black Friday.

Who is consuming everything? It’s too easy, although it’s mostly true, to say it is Americans. Really, it is everyone who participates in the wrong-headed idea that the source of freedom, fulfillment and salvation, is out there somewhere. Occupy means thinking locally, and in this case, so locally as to look and act within your own skin. Occupy, if that is true, represents something fundamentally radical, something so old that it has come around again,  “Know Thyself.” That is all, in the final analysis, that any of us truly does occupy.

Childhood's End by Lucky

There was a book I read when I was a teenager. I went through a bunch of science fiction stories in my desire to escape from the world I was slowly coming to know.  This book scared and delighted me. Looking back on it, as is my elderly want, I see it a little differently. At the time I was horrified that adulthood, assuming the real powers that Life had endowed us with, meant the destruction of our home planet. The book was named Childhood’s End (by Isaac Asimov), and even today it is making me think.

I think we have come to the time where, as a species, our childhood is ending. In the book, the planet Earth was destroyed by teenage exuberance. Human children had inherited, in an evolutionary leap, mental powers that they could not contain. In a spasm of discovery, they destroyed their beginning place. In the book this wasn’t that traumatic because it was clear that this destruction was just part of these children discovering they were made to inhabit the Cosmos. Today, I am less certain this is a good thing. Is it possible we could grow up, as a species, without destroying everything we’ve been?

I don’t know about you, but this question haunts me. I can’t say that I feel optimistic. I don’t rule the possibility out. I count on Mother Nature having something up her sleeve. I know, from my time amongst the elders, that we, as a species, can be changed. The right kind of hardship could alter us, could grow us up. I live with a certain amount of dreadful hope. I look forward to what I think will be too difficult to imagine. I don’t expect to survive. I want to, not to pass my genes on, but because I would like to be part of a world where I felt us pulling together, counting on each other, caring about the miracle we’re part of.

I think that time could be now, but it isn’t.  So, I live in a world where I feel an impending something, there is a storm cloud on the horizon, a shock-wave coming, a last moment of daylight, a gathering of the hopeful. I teeter on this moment of uncertainty. I am sometimes happy, sometimes sad, and always expectant. I want so desperately to see a way forward. What I see instead is many people coming forward with solutions. I’m skeptical, although I want to believe.

Teetering is a hardship. Maybe recognizing what we have wrought will bring us to our senses. Maybe the danger we pose to each other, to ourselves, will shake us. Do things have to get worse before they get better? Aren’t things bad enough now? I’d like to think it is possible to wise up under the present circumstances. I suppose that is part of why I want to hang out with elders. Certainly, my life has been enriched, by rubbing shoulders with those who have suffered and grown. But, we (elders) are still so unknown, and our kind remains so undeveloped. The last one billion of us were only born in the last 12 years.

I don’t know what to think. I want to, but I can’t shut off my mind. I know many have. I envy them sometimes, but I know my heart really depends upon my keeping my ear to the ground.

I can feel that there is an earthquake coming! The terrible thing is, that despite all my awareness, despite the loved ones I cling to, despite the efforts of others that care, I sense that none of us is really prepared. I console myself with thoughts of initiation, social metamorphosis, a general awakening, but I don’t see it happening yet. The Occupy movement seems to offer some hope, but hope for what, economic equity in a time of economic chaos, social justice in the face of massive social distrust.

Change, it is here, impacting everyone. Do we have to destroy this world to grow into another one? I don’t know. There is that much I can hope about, what I don’t know. Surprise! That is what is left to believe in, to prepare for, to be transformed by. That, and knowing, that this, is the time of childhood’s end.

I have also added a link. I don’t usually recommend websites but I have long felt that we (society) needed a vision of a future worth having and this short film points in that direction, Check it out http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-08-31&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Apoptosis by Lucky

I awoke early in the morning thinking about apoptosis. There is some precedent for me waking up early. I’ve had the repeated experience of waking up early on Friday mornings with a kind of incredible mental clarity. I seem to know things. I’ve awoken thinking about people, relationships, groups, ideas and the world. I have what I have come to call a kind of truth sense, I know things, things I wouldn’t have guessed I knew, things about how I should act, things I wasn’t aware I was thinking about. This morning it was apoptosis.

I am somewhat familiar with the word: it stands for voluntary cell death. I don’t know how it came to me. What made that word, which was not in my conscious thoughts, suddenly come into my awakening mind? I don’t know. This exegesis is not about that strange occurrence, it is about the mystery of apoptosis, and what it’s appearance brought into my life.

Let’s start with a true story. I had an accident last month (9/15). I lost control of my car and drove into a tree. I totaled my car, hurt my passenger (not too seriously, Thank God!), and scared myself. Since then I have been wrestling with the idea that my driving career is over. I don’t want to face this possibility, but I cannot be sure that I can keep anyone (myself included) safe on the road.

For about a month I’ve been without a car, and researching the possibility that I could avoid the termination of my driving career by acquiring an electric street vehicle. I found a vehicle (a street legal souped up golf cart with a top speed of 25 mph), someone who would customize it for me (and my wheelchair), someone who would even store it over the winter, so I could qualify for a federal tax break, and convince my community to put in a few charging stations. My mind went to work, and found a viable driving option that would allow me to maximize my freedom. I was pleased, imagining a locally expanding orbit, compensating for the inaccessible world I was coming to.

Then I awoke thinking about apoptosis. I knew apoptosis was an evolutionary breakthrough, the voluntary death of some cells enabling multi-celled beings to grow new and more capable. Death led to new life. I wasn’t sure what this thought was doing in my mind, or how it got there, but I noticed something unexpected: I was ready to give up driving!

Apoptosis, I later learned is the voluntary, “programmed” cell death that lets larger organisms survive and evolve. I discovered, to my chagrin, that I was willing to let this capacity (driving) go for the sake of not feeling anxious that some other part of life was going to be put in jeopardy. I realized, that if I could let this imagined freedom die, I, and the rest of life, would be free of one more possible threat. My beloved community would be a safer place to be part of.

This was just the beginning of how apoptosis is affecting me. I have been concerned about death, harboring some fear that this unknown transition would be painful, debilitating, and the end of the road. In my depths I’ve been fretting about how my fear of death has been shaping how I show up in life. Then I began to think about how apoptosis represents the awareness that cells have. Life for the larger organism, to which they are a part, their larger self (if you please), is aided by their voluntary death. I began to think of death as a part of a larger life-form.

I don’t know about how you deal with your personal death, but for me, the idea that my death might be part of life, that my death could be a service to the larger whole, is changing everything. I am not a suicide bomber seeking some kind of paradisiacal solution to end all problems, instead I am willing to live, and surely to die, for the sake of helping Life find a way to go on. I find re-assurance in the sense I have; that this life is not mine, it is Life’s, and that my death insures that Life has what It needs to keep going, and to keep evolving.

Apoptosis —“ voluntary programmed cell death that gives a larger, more complex organism, the capacity to grow and evolve.” That seems to me to be an excellent description of human death. Life benefits, it goes on, and confers upon all of us, who’s passing enables It, a little taste of being as eternal as It is. Ripening, like I think I have been doing, especially in these latter years, seems to be a way of becoming as richly endowed with the complex stuff of Life, so that with my passing something of this life goes on.

I also like the feeling I have that comes with apoptosis being somehow in my mind. I seem to be more connected than I realize. Apparently, probably like everyone else, I know more than I think I know. That now makes sense to me, I am connected, a part of a larger organism, that knows things, I can only marvel at, and sometimes be informed by.

A Pee Break by Lucky

I have been witnessing a miracle, something simultaneously ordinary and wondrous. I don’t know if I can capture what is so special about this occurrence with words, perhaps you have to be there, but I’m going to try, because we all deserve to know such a thing remains possible no matter how poor, sick and hopeless any of us might get. I know I benefit every time I just feel what I know — because I have been exposed to this occurrence. And to think — I might have thought something else — had I had only the image in my head to go with. I hope I can express it well enough so that you know what I mean.

I have a friend, Charmoon, who has an advanced case of MS, multiple sclerosis. This disease is a progressive condition, which has taken away Charmoon’s ability to move his own limbs, and will eventually take away his life. He lives with 24-hour caretakers, whom he relies completely on.  You would think he would be greatly depressed about his situation, but he isn’t. This isn’t the miracle, though it could be. I’ll get into what touches me so, later, after I’ve described circumstances most of us would fear.

This is a man who cannot move under his own power. He lives totally at the discretion of others. He eats, goes to bed, to the bathroom, answers the phone, has relationships and maintains his own small business, with the help of others. Some he pays (a small amount), and some he doesn’t. His work now primarily involves keeping this edifice of human helpers stable enough to ensure his survival. He is deeply on his own, struggling for his survival, while he is gratefully surrounded. Other able-bodied humans, prone to the distractions of their own complicated human lives, are his body. He lives marginally, constantly on the brink, he knows it, and seldom lets on.

Charmoon is living a kind of nightmarish life. He is living at the behest of some great mystery, and he is alive by virtue of the flawed hearts that keep him somehow going. Yet, he is also living gratefully. While this story isn’t about him, the miracle I am touched by, involves him, and the vulnerability of his life. With luck, it will touch you in some way similar to how it touches me.

Occasionally, Charmoon has to do— what we all have to do — pee. This sometimes happens when I am visiting with him. Then, because he needs help peeing, and I am there to witness what happens between his caretaker and him, I experience something so poignant and ordinary that it sometimes makes me cry tears that are a combination of joy and grief. The miracle takes place somewhere in the interaction of two men, who are old friends, and are now sharing their affection for each other in this extraordinary and most basic of ways.

A window opens, as Tryman, Charmoon’s old friend, prepares Charmoon, and holds the plastic pee bottle to his friend’s penis. Something along with the urine flows. It moves between them. Ostensibly, one man is caring of another. But, with these two, something more is taking place. The miracle of this moment is the open hearts, the caring that is going back and forth, the tenderness that is passing between them.

One man isn’t merely caring for another. That would be touching! Rather, what is happening here, is that both men are feeling their mortality, their shared vulnerability, their long-time mutual regard, and opening to each other. The caretaker is receiving care. The caretaken is giving, as well as receiving. Love, for each other, for this extraordinary and so basic life, for the Mystery that makes it all happen, goes back and forth. In that movement, for a brief time, each of us is woven together into a palpable something we cannot name as simply as unity, but we know we have shared something.

The peeing stops, but the flow doesn’t. Tryman covers Charmoon again, a few words are exchanged, maybe the familiarity of male humor returns, and the moment passes. But something indelible remains. Words can’t capture it, the sure camaraderie of friendship returns, but somehow, mixed in with it all, invisible as our breaths, there is something we each know joins us, though we cannot ever believe ourselves capable of swimming in that great expanse.

The ordinary resumes. The on-going and fatiguing scramble for some kind of survival goes on. Charmoon rests, or talks to another potential caregiver, or plans who he needs to make it through another day. There is no time to acknowledge the ineffable that just happened. There are too many hurdles to surmount.

We’ve wondered together whether we are somehow blessed. Being disabled, and having to rely on others the way we do, taking little for granted, we are so screwed up that we get to notice these little moments, when the world becomes something else, a place where love and resonance sometimes are evident. This realization is a great joy, which almost seems to make hell a blessed place.

Try to remember this little miracle — is this hell/heaven/or both?

All I know is that despite our differences, we are all alike, having to break to pee.

A Dilemma Story by Lucky

Every now and then I get an urge.  This is one of those times. I have been thinking about something for a couple of months now, and I want to explore this thought more. Usually I would do this kind of inquiry in my journal, but the subject of this thought is so unusual and social that I feel it would be better to explore it publicly. You see, what I want to explore, is a kind of story that was designed by indigenous people to look collectively at difficult moral and social issues. The story–form is called the dilemma story, it was invented in Africa to get groups of people (in their case communities) sharing with each other their best thinking about the thorny issues that haunted them.

I think we, as a species, are in a similar situation. I have this idea that we know (collectively) what we need to know to overcome what threatens us, but we are having some difficulty talking, in any real way, about it. I’ll pose what I see of the threat in a moment, but I want to say more about dilemma stories, and why I think they could be useful to us.

A dilemma story always ends with a question. There is no moral or answer. It represents no particular ideology, or worldview. It is highly unsatisfactory to the part of us that wants a clear, concise solution. Dilemma stories are designed to pose true dilemmas that have no correct solution, but vex us anyway. They ask us to put our heads and hearts together and see if “we” can put our collective arms around something that challenges all of us, they ask us to share the best of ourselves to come up with some things that could help us all.

As a psychologist, with a developmental orientation, I have been aware for some time that different stages in the growth course of the typical human being have different perspectives on life. These stages are invisible, inevitable and troublesome. People at different stages, talk with each other, using the same language, and assume they mean the same thing. They don’t.  This phenomenon, which I call the Babel Effect, leads to a lot of misunderstanding, confusion, heartache, mistrust, and social gridlock. The dilemma story, by virtue of having no right answer, bypasses this problem. It invites out the truest insights of everyone. In that way dilemma stories are trans-developmental, that is, they provide a means of getting to the wisdom present in any group.

For these reasons I have begun to think that dilemma stories might offer us, human kind, a way to approach a difficult topic and share the accumulated wisdom present. It seems to me that discussions, shared explorations, which don’t happen very often, could help. I know action speaks louder than words, but words are powerful, and can lead to unified actions. I suspect a course correction lies ahead. We are already in an era that is challenging.  I have the idea that the more methods we have for sharing the best thought available in the collective mind, the greater likelihood there is of responding to challenge wisely.

I’ve set for myself the task of writing a dilemma story for our times. I’m having a hard time with this task however. I am afraid the story exceeds my writing capacity. I’ve only come up with the opening. “Once upon a time a person was born into an unbelievable world at an incredible time.” I think I know the course of the story, but I haven’t yet found the words for it. The dilemma is clear to me. We, as a species, have come to a place with ourselves, and each other, where we are realizing that we pose a great danger to ourselves, each other, and this our only home. We are up against ourselves, and our on creations.

That is the situation, but it isn’t the dilemma, the real wonderment that haunts me. The question that beguiles me, isn’t how to stop the situation, which may or may not be inevitable, but how to live with a knowing of this challenge. For me, at the moment, the dilemma is, what form of consciousness best serves in an age like this? I can feel the uneasiness, the grief, frustration, uncertainty, anger and dismay. I am also touched by the poignancy, hope, desire, wonder and determination. I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t think anyone does. But, I can feel the depth of the uncertainty, the unlikelihood of it all, the vulnerability of the times, the looming of a storm-surge of change.

I find myself longing for it and fearing it. I find myself desiring to meet this change, this wave of Creation, with as much alignment as is possible. I also want to run away. But, in my best times, I stop eating chocolate, and wonder how? Is it enough to be open, to engage in what I presume to be the changes to come, to prepare for death, to grieve for all that is passing, to praise all that is, to live with a sense of how precious and unlikely it all is? I don’t know. What I do know is that I have a great desire to be as prepared as possible, not for protections sake, but to serve. The dilemma story, a kind of ancestral shared inquiry, appeals to me now. It seems to offer a way we can help each other face what we know is coming.

Finally, I think I am drawn to the dilemma story because it is truthful. This life, with all of its fragility hangs upon the thread of our choices. We are confronted, like any mortal animal with our own death (our own lives), and we are conscious that Life asks something of us (while we are here), and we wonder. Is any of this life, this planet, these others — is any of it ours? I think not, but we still have a great responsibility, that is our dilemma, at least to me, and that is why the dilemma story compels me like it does.

Grief and Praise by Lucky

Below is an old indigenous story I know. It expresses something fundamental. I open with this story because I have lost my moorings, and I want my sense of balance back.

Once all the creatures in the world gathered in a great council to clarify the jobs they each perform in the service of Creation. One by one they step forward. The beaver is here to look after the wetlands and to monitor how the streams flow. The worm is here to burrow through the earth so that the roots of plants may find air and nutrients. The deer is here to slip through the woodlands, to watch what is happening.

The council is progressing well — but one poor creature stands away from the fire, in the shadows, uncertain of its role. This is the human. At last this being steps forward and haltingly addresses the assembly “We are confused. What is the purpose of human beings?” The animals and the plants, the insects and the trees — all are surprised. They laugh, but then the laughter gives way to stunned silence. ”Don’t you know? It’s so obvious!!” “No,” replied the human, “we need you to tell us.” And the other creatures of the world all responded, “Your purpose is to glory in it all. Your job is to praise Creation.”   

I don’t seem to be praise worthy. I am too often preoccupied with my own little worries. I miss the big picture, the reason for my life, because I am elsewhere, living like my life is more important than what is going on around me. I even worry about worrying too much. For good reason it turns out. Life goes on, and I seem to be limping along behind, whining about things not being what I want them to be.

Fortunately, Nature has provided a corrective, not one I like a lot. I’m coming to know this difficulty better, and to respect it a whole lot more. This is grief. There seems to be a relationship between grief and praise. I am learning about this relationship in a somewhat natural way. I am finding that I am experiencing more loss, thus more grief, as I am coming back to life.

I am losing everything and everybody. I have had a few friends die. I know I will have some more. I’ve lost lovers, loved ones, homes, jobs, even my own capabilities. Each of these losses has hurt, sent me spinning, and made me wonder about this thing called Life. And, if I am honest, each has made me a little more grateful for what remains. I don’t like hurting because of these losses. I don’t like knowing that they will continue. But, as the losses mount, I am noticing, each of them pushes me a little further in the direction of really appreciating what is here.

As I grieve the losses I am taking, I am growing my appreciation for the miraculousness of Life. I like this development. I’m just not sure I like the price I’m paying for it.

Grief is opening me up to the real cost of life. The impermanence of everything, the fleeting moment, the embrace that always ends, these are the things I live for, cannot hold, and that make me grateful for my existence. What always evades me, meaning what ultimately passes beyond me, is what I value the most.

I’m learning that losses invigorate my appreciation for life. What I cannot preserve, I value.  When I expose myself to loss I am dragged into a whirlwind of pain that paradoxically enlivens me, and opens my eyes to the incredibly beautiful transience of life. Suddenly loss becomes gain. I am thrust into a landscape that breaks my heart, and simultaneously introduces to the delicate persistence of life.

Lately this has taken the form of letting in a painful reality. If I want real contact, to feel palpably connected, I rely upon others. It grieves me that others are so preoccupied with their own lives. There is nothing wrong. I am just lonelier than I want to be. Because I feel this pain and loss, because I can admit this grief, I am more available for the brief moment of real contact that does come. I am more prepared when I don’t maintain that something is wrong and I grieve what is. I get to feel more connected because I accept being less connected.

Grief at what passes, or is true, or is what I cannot change, makes me appreciate so much more. Feeling my grief, all that I lose, is what frees me to fully praise this existence. It doesn’t matter if I think life is imperfect, if I feel that it asks too much of me, because no matter what, I am being exposed to waterfall of constantly changing sensations that, because of my losses, take on a hue of poignancy and wonder. Grief gives rise to praise, not because I am just right, but because life is.

Knowing this, having it deep in my experiential bones, is my balance point. Balance may move around, may be very shaky, will be dynamic, because I now grasp, that too have balance I have to lose balance.

A Confluence by Lucky

Today, I feel like an old-time explorer. I’m looking for a place others have been to, but that doesn’t appear on any map. I’m not talking about Bolinas, which keeps tearing down its sign, as if hiding changes anything. I’ve heard that there is an intersection of two rivers of energy, that once you behold them, change the way you see live. I know I am searching for something.  I know not what, but I know it is here, that it exists, that it is real, and that it lies at the heart of a confluence, the place where two energies meet.

As an explorer I’ve found what I thought was this confluence many times. I’ve been wrong. I have discovered some new places, but they have all proven to be something beside a true confluence. Maybe I’ll be wrong again. I can only hope my hubristic failures of the past have taught me something. I am an innocent explorer. Yes, I’ve made mistakes (and probably will again). But, I keep going, searching for something that exists both within me and in the world. My innocence is directly proportional to my ignorance, or if you prefer, to my unknowingness.

The confluence I’ve stumbled upon is surprising. I’ve been searching for it everywhere, for as long as I can remember, and here it is, not in some mysterious place, but right in the way of where I have been headed anyway.  I was destined to come here. And yet, if I hadn’t been searching I might never have found it. I can’t explain the paradox of this finding, the discovery I couldn’t help but notice after a life of searching, and an arrival that comes as a surprise. Here, is what I’ve found.

The Transitions movement is one of the rivers of energy. Deep in these rushing waters is an awareness that we as a species have cornered ourselves. Our reliance upon cheap energy, ever-ready resources, and of someone else to pay the price, has pushed us into a spreading crisis. The Transitions movement has come about in response to the dawning awareness that as a species we are about to go through something. This something is poignant and painful because we did this to ourselves, we’ve known we were doing it for a long time, and because we’ve known it will be fatal. We, as the peoples of Earth, are entering an era of deep uncertainty.

Many have talked about this time as a species-wide rite-of-passage. This is a creation, the destruction of life as we’ve known it, which may deliver some of us, someplace beyond adolescence. This may, or may not, be true. The events may unfold differently. But, the longing, the steadfast stubbornness, that has governed the prevailing norms, has seemingly guaranteed this kind of difficult transition. Like my discovery, this moment is fraught with inevitability and surprise.

I am deeply and humbly impressed that another river of energy is flowing into, and meeting, this one. Self-destruction is a pretty powerful river, the fact that it is met, is rather amazing to me. To add to the rather mind-blowing nature of this confluence is not just that I am discovering this, but that I am a part of it. What, on earth, am I talking about?

There is another river of energy that meets the self-destructive tendencies that seem to have doomed humankind. I am talking about elders and elder wisdom. By virtue of increased life-expectancy there are more old people, both as a percentage of the population, and in sheer numbers, than ever before. This is historical, and maybe well-timed. Here is why I think so.

Elders, as opposed to merely old folks, have been through something. They have been killed off by loss in a way that has made them again, and given them perspective. Just as we as a species are being confronted by our own limitations, we re-discover that this process (being limited) has been going on, beneath the cultural radar, for a long time. There are those who have spent time suffering with the losses of that could inform us now.

And, what do they have to say? How could this confluence be meaningful? Elders have a kind of accumulated wisdom, a particular wisdom about resilience. This isn’t the kind of knowledge you’ll find in books, articles or lectures. It is about surviving, about being changeable and unchanging in the face of change, about what really matters. This wisdom isn’t written down in a book somewhere, it is too precious and ephemeral for that, it is only, and primarily, available through relationship.

The river of elder wisdom runs deep beneath the surface and meets the destructive force of the river of self, and environmental, neglect we have unleashed. Elders know the awakening that attends awareness of a life of poor choices. They know something about being boxed in by themselves. They know the transforming power that comes with humble submission to what is. They know something of the perspective needed to endure. Theirs is a hard-earned wisdom, a wisdom that could be meaningful now, that could be timely, that could help us find a way to ripen through this time of hardship.

What makes this a stupendous discovery, at least for me, is the fact that I am one of them, the older folks that is. I have to laugh when I realize that my personal happiness, actualization of my self, and the potentially subversive antidote to what ails us culturally, all intersect. This is the confluence of my dreams, and a great moment to be alive. The challenges are great, the stakes high, and now being a new kind of human matters. And, surprisingly, as I am growing older, elder wisdom is needed like never before.

At The Edge — by Lucky

Here I am again, out on a cornice, overlooking the Abyss, feeling a kind of vertigo. I’m not here by choice, but it takes some part of me to stay here and look. I am done away with by the spectacle that unfolds around and beneath me. For some reason, I get to be a witness.  Is what I see my own folly, or something I can only guess at? My breath is not mine, not here. The Abyss seems to want me here, dizzy and awed. What I behold through the fear, anxiety and awe, is distorted by my own emotion, it is big and indeterminate.

I have been sitting in collapse, trying to live with the realization that the cultural house of cards is coming apart. I know not everyone is being affected in the same way. And, I know everyone is being affected, some more directly and immediately than others. I can feel this erosive process accelerating. I don’t know how long things that are familiar will last. I don’t know if what I am aware of is going to take 10 years or 100. But, I can feel it happening. I’m sitting here helpless, witnessing this certain demise, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, and struck with awe.

I’ve lived in proximity with the Abyss forever, but I only came to a vivid awareness of it when I had my stroke. Then I got it, that what I thought of as my life, wasn’t mine at all.  I began seeing things differently then, sensing the Abyss, and having my attention altered by Life. That is a long, disorienting story. Its been unfolding over time. Today, the latest version, finds me out on this cornice, trembling, and once again being made seasick by what I see, a roiling soup of potentials, all of which include demise, and some of which include evolution.

I know I should be glad. I am. Some of what I sense is evolution, the way these changes are going to bring forward other aspects of our humanity. But, I’m also horrified to see that all of the paths forward contain demise. In some it ends us, in some it alters us, in some it utterly transforms us. That is the good news. But, the bad news is the amount of pain, and the scale of it, that lies ahead. The good news is that some will be shaped by the pain, and made again in that crucible. The bad news is that all will know the pain.

I am constantly surprised by this life, it seems, that one thing is always joined with an other (or more others). I should know by now. The level of connection, of all things being coupled, is far more than I am used to. So, I should have guessed, and maybe I did abstractly, that demise might be accompanied. Sure, the probability of evolution is increasing, conditions are such that they are coaxing out of us the parts of ourselves that haven’t fit easily into the herd mentality of the mainstream. Diversity is giving us a chance. So is the gauntlet of environmental and deeply human limitations we are going through. Life is painfully teaching us what we need to know, evolving us, changing our nature.

Will we learn to fit in? It is too soon to say. What can be said with some assurance is that right now demise, collapse is happening. Are we learning from it? I’m not sure. I know that sitting here feeling it, directly experiencing the frayed ends, watching people losing functioning, is heart rendering. I know that evolution is messy and uncertain. It is working on us, using our own forms of neglect to help us awaken. I’m impressed by the possibilities implicit in this moment. If it is possible, I have an even clearer image of the pattern of creating through destruction. There is so much that is poignantly passing, and there is so much that is now full of beginningness!

I have long felt, as a disabled person, impoverished by my health and our dysfunctional social safety net, going without health insurance,  that I was living in a house of cards. I have made some peace with the realization that it could all come down some time. The improbability and seeming impossibility of this life has always impressed me. I’m kept from falling into depression by the even more miraculous awareness that despite it all, despite the improbability, we, I, everything exists, shot through with vulnerability, uncertain and here.

I am out on this cornice witnessing our death throes and birth pangs. I can’t make any of it happen. I am not immune to the pain and uncertainty. And, I am grateful for this moment. I am alive and I am witnessing, feeling, creation at work. It looks like the life I’ve known is being taken apart again, and I know it is simultaneously being put together anew.

Going Nowhere Fast — by Lucky

I was sitting in front of the common house, in my wheel chair, in the shade, enjoying the day, when suddenly I was hit by something I didn’t expect. From time to time I sit outside, to get fresh air, to feel nature, and to let myself be assailed by what wants my attention. I didn’t see this one coming though, perhaps I should have, I’m not as oblivious as I seem, but for a period of time, I was taken aback by the realization I was living in a collapsing society.

I’ve been writing the Slow Lane for a long time now. Along the way I’ve realized that even doing something as mundane and simple as taking a nap can be a revolutionary act.  Slowing down, enough to fall asleep, to relax into the moment, to trust the self, is beyond many of us. Even the road to the unconscious is cluttered with cultural detritus such as things to do, people to see, thoughts that press for attention. Thank God, exhaustion sometimes triumphs.

Even with this disabled seat, at the edges of the slow lane, I haven’t let myself stare fully into the abyss. By that I mean, I haven’t really let myself know what I already know. I get jittery just thinking about this. I feel anxious. I worry that if I let myself know, or worse yet, feel, that this cultural edifice is coming down, then I am going to be thought too pessimistic, crazy, or somehow self-indulgent.

Yesterday was even worse. As I sat, the realization came to me, that the predicted collapse is already happening.  All at once I felt so many things. I still am. I felt my shame and dismay. I wanted my daughter to have something else. I knew my own vulnerability, how easily perishable I am, in my little home in the middle of urban sprawl. I knew how deeply unprepared I am. I saw the extent of the denial I live. I wanted to cry, to feel grief, that I, and the human experiment have come to this. My silent longing for a community of companions, suddenly morphed into a family feeling, together, we are confronted by the brink.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need more books, or articles, movies and lectures about Peak Oil, economic disaster, or climate change. I’m saturated with apocalyptic images of the future. I understand the fear that possible futures generate. I’m afraid too. The present however, is enough to kick my ass. Yesterday, I grasped that the future is here and now. Collapse is happening! If not for me, right now, for those without jobs, homes, health, income, food, friends, family. Poverty, the third world, and all the ignominious ways that we let each other suffer, assail me now. I can’t walk away — there is no place to go.

So, in this moment, I’m just sitting with it, in it, feeling all that it asks of me. Strange, I know what I see is devastating, yet I’m still here, in the midst of this unfolding horror. I want to do something about it — but, I can’t. I’m too disabled. But, I am Lucky. I can sit right in the middle of it, doing nothing, just letting it sink in.

I’m sitting in collapse, the cultural world I have known doesn’t work, the end of an era is here. I know, I don’t want to argue about it, the whole edifice hasn’t come down yet. For some people it is working, there is very little change, maybe even an imagined future, the prospect of positive change. Maybe some unforeseen development will save us. I don’t know. I’m not predicting anything. But, I am aware of something. And, what I’m aware of, is that what is, already carries all the seeds that disturb me.

I think I have got to learn to live as if collapse is already taking place. What does that mean?

I’ve been blessed enough, by my life-threatening ailment, to know death exists. Knowing the surety of my own death has made me stronger, this awareness has helped me get clear about who I am. Maybe living with collapse could do the same. Suddenly, like Lazarus raised from the crypt, I might appreciate, more completely, the life I have. I imagine I might live differently, if I felt the presence of collapse, like I have come to feel death is a part of life. I know that my awareness of the miracle of this existence depends upon my ability to let if I let collapse in. Collapse is already happening.

I am sitting now. That is about all I can do. As I’m sitting, it is sinking in. I am in the circle. The end and the beginning are both here. Collapse, which scares the hell out of me, is part of wholeness (not my favorite part). I don’t want to accept it. I think a lot of the busy-ness and rushing I see everywhere around me are other’s refusal to accept it. But, I don’t know that. Still, collapse exists, and is part of the circle, an expression of wholeness. I want to run away. But, I can’t run, and there is no place, outside the circle, to go. So, I’m sitting, doing the most I can, letting it sink in. Collapse is here.

Age and Happiness — by Lucky

There have been reports, lately, from researchers who have been studying happiness, that people are happier as they get older. This development is consistent with my experience. It is good news. Something is happening, according to those who study happiness over the life-span, that makes people much more pleased to be alive as they get older. Why?

Oh, not for the reasons that are commonly thought, but because aging sometimes brings with it the chance to actualize a life-long project — that is, to become your self, to take possession of what makes you unique. This thrilling development comes with longevity, and makes aging, coming to ourselves, something, unique and potentially powerful.

Why does this matter; to me, to any old person, to our culture? It is too simple to say this matters because, as far as we know, it has never happened before. This is a first time in the history of our species! And that means that we have no idea about what this development means. This whole thing, happiness included, is up in the air. Knowing that, and getting older at this time, has drawn my attention. It has also motivated me. I’m part of, like it or not, the baby boom generation.  It isn’t in my blood to sit around and have someone define for me the meaning of this gift of longer life.

There are plenty of reasons why happiness might grow in this stage of life. On the opposite end of the spectrum from that dirty word “retirement,” lies an opportunity for a new, more self-defined, life, a chance to re-create your self. Theory has it that old people are used up, finished, too tired, to have much of a life. As recently as our father’s generation people had the good sense to die shortly after retirement. That isn’t the case much anymore. And, that change, people living longer, has just now come on the scene. In 1970 a person reaching the age of 65 had only a 14% chance of reaching 85. Now almost half of us who reach 65 can expect to live, healthily, to 85 and beyond. We have almost 20 additional years no one has had, or been able to, look forward to before.

Happiness grows with age. That makes sense. Rules, roles, cultural assumptions, family expectations all have diminishing impact. But, happiness can be surprising too. Work no longer provides a structure of meaning. This is a loss, it can be confusing and disorienting, out of mastery comes the Mystery of emptiness. The tides change. People experience the bitter, but enlightening, gall of diminishment. With aging comes loss. How then can this be one of the happiest times of life?

It is, precisely because of the losses that we are dealt. Diminishment, becoming less of who we were, leads to enlargement, becoming more of who we want to be. How can this be? There is a reversal here that is totally unexpected. The pain of loss; the losing of wealth, health, prestige, comfort, abilities, friends, loved ones, family members, adds up, and increases appreciation for the gift of life. As life is pared away, the truly old dies off leaving what is essential, a being cleansed of superficialities. One, happily, gets to choose again. The extra years, can mean for many, a new and more satisfying life.

Happiness researchers explain the uptick in satisfaction in old age by extolling the virtues of greater health, longer lives, increased selectivity about time usage, the easing of responsibilities, and deepening relationships. I see it slightly differently. For me, increasing age means the possibility of increased self-possession. External factors do change, as the researchers notice and report, but internal factors change too. To my way of thinking, these internal factors go a lot further to explain happiness than the external changes.

Responsibilities change. There is increased selectivity, a better use of time, not because of getting older, but because getting older means becoming more my self. I have new responsibilities that mean more to me than the old responsibilities. I use my limited time more carefully. I am more selective because I have more choices than I once did. I am, as an aspect of getting older, more at home in my own skin. This is the real source of my increasing happiness.

Obviously that means a lot to me. I’ve worked hard to become, and hold onto, my self. I think that what is happening for me, is possible for everyone else. I’ve seen it, in my self and others, aging can mean being free to be one’s self. What a surprising turn of events!  This seems like a watershed moment when society, culture, anyone could age into a greater maturity. I don’t know about you, but for me aging is suddenly something I don’t want to miss, and that makes me happy.

Old And In The Way — by Lucky

“If we don’t have extended consciousness to match our (new) life span,

 we are dying longer instead of living longer.” — Rabbi Zalman Schacter

I’m getting older. At my next birthday I’ll be 63. In this culture, that is over the hill. I don’t feel old. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but then again neither is my lifestyle. I suspect, as luck would have it, I am getting old at just the right time. There is the hard won wisdom I have come into, a demographic surge of my kind, and the fact that my old brain is well-suited to hold the big picture. Being old, being 63, has never been like this before. I’m probably going to live longer than any generation has lived before. No doubt that means some new and unforeseen problems, but it looks like it also means some new and unforeseen opportunities.

Amongst the unforeseen opportunities lays consciousness and maturity. Maybe, because we have been granted this miraculous opportunity of longevity, we can grow into our species potential.  Just once, I would like to hold up my head and feel pride for our kind. We have shown a remarkable capacity to care for others, and ourselves, in crisis, but we haven’t yet shown ourselves that we are capable of being our best, of fulfilling our potential, of serving life. Anything approximating this kind of aware-being will change the meaning of being in the way to something more life serving.

I don’t know about you, but I relish the chance to kick around and see what kind of changes I can generate. I plan on being really in the way. First off, I have no desire to apologize to anyone for being old. I’m not so set in my ways that I refuse to learn new tricks, but I don’t plan on just going along with the crowd either. I like the me my life experience has allowed me to discover, and I don’t intend to let me go for some new idea that doesn’t really honor what I’ve learned about life. If that makes me strange, then so be it, I’m ready to be a little strange. Especially if I get a sense that the big picture isn’t being adequately considered.

Being in the way used to be a slur that was aimed at old people. I intend to turn it into a calling, a chance to be true to what matters, a personal responsibility. I hope I can turn being in the way into an art form. I think the world needs more of us, in the way. Maybe that is the great hidden secret of having so many boomers, generating this dramatic demographic shift, coming along now. The work of the sixties is not done. We didn’t have the maturity required to finish the job of freedom then. Maybe we still don’t, but we can further the process, we can advance the ball, not only for the old, but for everybody.

I don’t think I’m retiring. I think that I’m just getting ripe. I now have a voice, I’ve gotten used to being disabled, I’m alive with a new fervor. I may have 20 years no one expected (least of all, me), and I’m really tired, tired of being bound up in somebody else’s dream. The new, unexpected years deserve a new, and better, dream. I think that Evolution is at work, that it has created this opportunity for some kind of wiser human to be on the scene, and I intend to play along with it.

This is a time when being old, where having seen some things before, where having the chance to go further, to be even more, is going to make a difference, not just to entitlement programs, but to our species sense of perspective. I think the elder years hold the prospect of advancing our kind beyond adolescence. I hope so. I think elders have a better chance to really reflect values that go beyond the marketplace. I pray that we know, and are willing to live for, what really matters. If so, then I have every confidence that we, the old ones, are going to make a difference. In the process I expect to be old and in the way.

                           Seven Reasons These Are the Power Years

•  We’ll be living longer and healthier

•  the cyclic life plan (cycling in and out of careers) will replace the outmoded linear model

•  We’ll have a big — and growing — pool of role models

•  We’ll be wiser about what matters

•  We’ll have new freedoms

•  We’ll still have clout in the marketplace (advertisers will break free of their addiction to youth).

•  We’ll be open to change.

                                 — Ken Dychtwald from Audacious Aging

Catch and Release by Lucky

I remembered a time, when I was young, probably 10 or so, when I used to get up early in the morning and go fishing. In a rather cruel form of childhood recreation I used to catch and release blue gill. I guess I got to feel somehow powerful because I could bait these beautiful but hungry fish onto my hook. I never once, in my childhood, thought about what these fish might have been experiencing. That memory haunts me, as I recall being caught and released.

When I had the stroke I had no idea that life had just caught me. But, I would learn. I was drug out of the water of everything I had ever known. No matter how I wriggled I could not free myself, in fact the hook went deeper. I could have died, perhaps should have, maybe did die in some ways, but was ultimately thrown back in, to live another day in waters that have been forever changed by the hook, and the journey of being caught and released.

Life has become a more complex experience since that time. I no longer believe that what seems to be, really is. The darkness seems to be so deep, deep enough perhaps, to make the light really bright. The more I know that I don’t know anything, the closer to the truth I get. The waters, once they changed, keep changing, and I am lured and landed with each shift. I have a kind of post-traumatic memory. 

I am, because of the vividness of losing, still there, still caught — something hard, inscrutable, exists in me, a gut-wrenching recollection — and I am in the shock of re-birth, of being tossed back. There is nothing now that does not remind me that this moment is fleeting and that radical change is always here. I am caught, horrified from time to time, by the same perception that releases me. I am in the flow of Life but I am not that flow.

I have a hard time being around someone who is bored. I don’t get boredom in the midst  of a natural disaster, like the recent earthquake in Japan. I want to yell, “Wake up! Wake up to the near-death experience you are having.” That is how caught I sometimes am. I forget that I have also experienced release. I am disillusioned, and thereby freed of old limiting beliefs. I am diminished and thereby enlarged. I have had my life taken away from me, and thereby been reintroduced to this improbable miracle I experience as new life.

Being caught always, being released always, makes it hard for me to participate in the day-to-day life that goes on around me. Sometimes I feel crazy. How can anything matter so much? What am I doing here? What’s really going on here? I am caught in a world that is crazy-making, filled with so much pain, despair and hopelessness. I am simultaneously released into that same world and it is unimaginably beautiful, aware, and exquisitely alive. Frequently I am just confused, weepy and uncertain. I can’t even really explain it, to myself or to anyone.

I’ve tried to think about it. Is there anything I have brought back from the edge that I can give my fellow beings, my friends, my community, my kind? I was reduced to nothing, to helplessness and hopelessness (I had to be, in order to learn), I was suspended there for a long time (I had to be, to be rendered available), caught by who knows what, and I am being brought back to life (I’m learning to praise Creation).

You’d think I would have something. I do and I don’t. I know this isn’t the whole story, and I know it is a mixed, more complex story than most of us have been led to believe, and I guess now I know that not-knowing how to live in this mad-dash world is appropriate. I wish I could say something more solid, but there appears to me to be nothing solid about the world, or perhaps it’s just me.

I recall how banal was the cruelty of my childhood passion for catching and releasing fish. I remember that I read the Book of Job during my ordeal. I was looking for some way to make sense of the suffering imposed upon my life. I have never overcome the experience I had of the darkness of God, the inscrutability of the Void, the carelessness of evolution. Now I rest on this brink of time, alive with possibility, quivering, knowing that it is all passing so quickly, and deeply thankful, that despite everything, the years of hopeless longing, I have one more chance, that I exist, caught and released into this life.

Ripening — Lucky

Life apparently thrives by occasionally knocking over the apple cart.  Just when I think I have something figured out, I am plunged, once again, in over my head. Sometimes I think Life has a wicked sense of humor and is a bit sadistic. I usually occupy this sentiment when I am feeling sorry for myself. I’m not in that place now. So lately, in the midst of my unforeseen happiness, where I am feeling glad to be me, I have been reflecting on what is happening when I, and my world, get turned upside down. It looks like I am adopting a new attitude. It seems that these recurring dilemmas, as predictably unpredictable as they may be, are all part of a process that seems to be ripening me.

The idea that I am being ripened appeals to me. I know that soon I am going to fall off the tree. I know, that despite all of my illusions, protestations and elaborate projects and schemes, the end is coming. I’ve stopped worrying about it. But, I am still curious. So the idea that I am being ripened, that I could be the seed pod for some, as yet undefined, new life form, intrigues me.

Now bear in mind, as I am this minute, I am only speculating. I don’t really know anything. But, I keep imagining death as a form of transition, a shift from one form to another. In my mind, seeing death as a form of transition has a lot of explanatory value. Mainly, viewing things this way, makes the ordeals, the inconveniences of my life, the little broken edges, have more dignity. These recurring challenges are not a sign of my incompleteness; instead I am being ripened. Maybe I am being prepared, ripening like a wine grape in the sun, steeping like a good cup of tea, evolving like a caterpillar being chrysalized. The thought that even death is a part of evolution, that I could, once more, be becoming something else, fills me with a feeling that I am going deeper into the familiar, instead of being cast away, dried out, useless, and done.

Thinking this way also helps me appreciate the difficulties that keep arising. They may actually be Nature’s way of shaping me into a new form, one that I cannot imagine but can intuit. I know I do better, I play the hand dealt to me, am more creative in my responses to Life, when I am anticipating becoming. I may not know where I am heading, may not have any idea about how I’m going to get anywhere, but I have a sense that I am moving, ripening, changing, becoming something else. 

This may be sheer delusion, certainly I have no science to back it up, but it still serves me. It seems to me that no matter what I believe, no matter how sophisticated I am with the scientific method, I still have to come to terms with the great inscrutable mystery of death. And, it also seems to me, that how I come to terms with death determines how I come to terms with Life. I live according to the way I envision death.

Ripening offers me a chance to participate, not like I alone hold the key to my fate. I am prepared to be alone, to take responsibility for this life, actually, I think ripening demands it. But, ripening, becoming, implies yet another stage, in another, I would say, greater context. I seem to be part of some larger, as yet unknown, ecosystem. If this is true, and in my current imagination it is, then there is this strange other, that I am part of, but that is unknown. I am simultaneously the new seed arriving and the old ecosystem receiving it. In my mind, I am being prepared to quicken a greater wholeness.

Death, in this line of thought, isn’t the end of the line, it is some kind of timely ripening. As the caterpillar entering the chrysalis, or a pupae becoming an adult, there is a change of states. The timing is semi-predictable, and the general direction is assured. Despite the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy in the Universe doesn’t seem to be running down, instead the Universe seems to confound us by conserving, even increasing its energy. Death may be another expansion of the Universe.

Ripening is a mysterious phenomenon for me. For instance it seems to happen by virtue of a combination of circumstances. There seems to be something inside that matures. And, while that is happening, there also seems to be something outside that provides the necessary stimulation. Ripening, to me, is a co-creative process. This thought thrills me. Maybe, by ripening, accepting the unacceptable turns on this thrill ride of life, going into the darkness of Mystery, and dying as I live, I get a little closer to the source of all this complex stimulation.

If this is true, wow, am I glad to be alive and to get to die! If it is a delusion, a fantasy of my own making, then I’m merely glad I had imagination enough to create an interesting  way of life.

I hope you do too.

A Future Not Our Own — Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back
And take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
It is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
The magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
Which is another way of saying
The kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

                                                                    Oscar Romero

On Dying — by Lucky

I have recently been focused upon happiness. I discovered the possibility that I could be happy, that I could be just myself, during a meeting with a group of elders. Since that time, I’ve been looking at my life, and trying to identify the chief obstacles to my happiness. This piece is about what appears to be my foremost obstacle, death. I identified my anxiety as a daily obstacle, and then fear of death when I examined my anxiety more closely. I gave myself a retreat for the holidays, felt the loneliness I’ve traditionally resisted, and came up with a gift I never imagined. I rediscovered dying, the nemesis of my happiness, as I kept lonely vigil over the holidays. 

What I mean is that dying didn’t change, it is still an inscrutable mystery, a silent one-way passage, through which I know I will one day go. Instead something in me changed.

It started with the realization that I would be (have been) sorely disappointed if I let my fear of death keep me from being happy in this life. Having been surprised to discover the viability of genuine happiness, that what I thought was just an advertising slogan could be real in my life, I realized I was unlikely to truly be myself if I was not happy. I have been thinking about happiness, as a regular part of being myself, of actualizing Mystery’s creation, ever since.

So what has death got to do with happiness? Those two words, death and happiness, don’t often appear in the same sentence. What relationship do they have in my life? As I explained, happiness, for me, depended upon finding a new way to relate to the fact of my coming death.  And that happened! In no way I could have expected, but death is suddenly another rite of passage that is going to deliver me to a new way of being. This is still scary but not as scary as it once was. Here’s what I discovered. Probably it won’t work for you, your freedom is your business afterall, but it might help you to know about it.

I noticed a pattern, that seemed to prevail in my life, and in the lives of the elders I find myself respecting the most. It has to do with diminishment. I wrote about it once, in one of my Slow Lane pieces, and it has stayed with me, as a compelling paradoxical mystery, that it seems to me, everybody should know about. You see the paradox is that diminishment, whether it be by hardship, loss, infirmity, bad luck, or old age, seems to lead (not in all cases) to a kind of enlargement. What I mean is that those who have suffered being made smaller and less capable by life, miraculously gained some new capabilities and perspective. Diminishment lead to enlargement.

This pattern gives me a lot of reassurance. Not in some New-Agey way, because having to suffer the uncertainty and pain of diminishment is still in the picture, but because someone new, with a bigger picture, often emerges from the ashes. As Rumi says in one of his poems, after exploring his earlier lives as mineral, plant, and flesh, “when, by dying, have I ever been made smaller?” I see death as the great Diminisher, and as a result of noticing the reliability of this pattern, as the great Enlarger. Now my anxiety about death is greatly reduced.

That is not all, though it could have been enough. I also realized that if I put death in my right hand, and learning, growth and life in my left hand, I could enhance my life by merely shifting my attention to the left hand. It seems that if I look too intently at my right hand, at death, it fills my field of vision and becomes everything. I am dead before I die. If however I attend to the other hand, I’m not living in denial of death, it is right there with my other hand, I am instead actively involved with living, learning and growing.

Shifting my attention has never been easy. My fear and anxiety have too frequently determined where my attention goes, but one of the gifts of my stroke difficulty was I had to learn how to do just that. You see I had suffered such losses, of my marriage, family, home, health, and work that I was kind of mesmerized by them. I knew that in order to live, I had to shift my attention away from what I had lost, to what remained. It took a long time. I still have days when the losses overrun me. But, after a difficult time, I succeeded. It helped to discover that quite a lot remained. But I wouldn’t have made that discovery if I hadn’t shifted my attention. So, I know I can do it, because I had to do it, with the chips down, earlier to save my life.

I know I can do it again, that living fully, being true to myself, staying close to Mystery, being happy, matters enough to me, that the work involved with shifting my attention adds to the dignity of living as consciously as possible. I’ll probably fail often, but if I’m diligent, maybe I can move my default position of fear and anxiety toward happiness. Can you imagine that! At last I can.