Growing Older by Lucky

I have been writing about growing older. The process of sitting down and thinking about what I have been learning has taken me to places in my own awareness that I didn’t know existed. Strangely, I‘ve been learning from some mystery source within me. What I realized lately, is such a new idea for me, and is so relevant to what I perceive around me, that I want to share this exploration, because if this idea has any merit, it might decrease our suffering. It has something to do with growing older, something inevitable, that you and I have no control over.

I guess I started consciously aging when I had my stroke. Before then, aging was kind of abstract, a kind of diminishment I was going to go through some day in the future. Then my life was overturned by a long near death experience. The experience itself taught me a lot about this precious miracle we call Life. Afterward, when I realized that I was going to come back to Life, as an older, broken-down, disabled, remnant of a man, I came face-to-face with what it meant to be an old person in a world that focuses on health, production, and eternal doing.

I have been dwelling within this experience for some time now. I bring the perspective and sensitization of my long nightmare. I bring this to being a disabled, brain-damaged man, alive and older. I don’t think I have yet recovered from what happened to me. So, I’m still reeling from the sucker punch Life gave me, the one that broke through my lethargy, and renewed this process of awakening. Wakening anew has meant, among other things, finding out more about entering and occupying the ranks of the old.

In truth, I’m still an infant old person. I’m only 65. I still have the energy to be indignant about how old people are treated, and I have the awareness to know that this is a disservice to all. So, a part of what motivates me to write about this, to care, to try to create a change, is because I hate waste. Its not that the old are cast off — don’t get me wrong that bothers me — but what really irks me, is that perspective, hard-won experience, and wisdom go too.

I live with a fear that haunts me, and makes getting older a restless, anxiety-provoking time. I fear being placed, in my wheelchair, in some back ward somewhere, where nobody knows me or cares about me. Somehow, I know it has happened, and can happen again, perhaps to me. Contrast this fear, with the budding sense I have, that I am just now ripening into what I was meant to be, and you have the raw ingredients for all kinds of tumult. My thoughts are trying to compensate for the remarkable ignorance I’m finding in myself, and in my culture.

Well, these thoughts and feelings happened upon something the other day, which has shaken me, and makes this a bad dream, one I dearly want to wake from. I already have a hard time being a disabled person (the disabled were the first people the Nazi’s tried to exterminate). I’ve had to learn all the difficult lessons that most people fear will come with the debilities of old age. I have had to learn how to be dependent. I’ve had to learn how to ask for help. I’ve had to face my own diminishment, to know my own incapacity, to sit with helplessness. I know I am feared. People practice “gaze aversion” with me all the time. I have had to deal with being a product of this culture. I have had to battle with my own internalized prejudice against being disabled. Basically, I’ve hated and feared my self.

Luckily, I’ve been at this for a while. I’ve learned what I had to, and overcome most of my own prejudice. By and large, I’m now immune to most of the prejudice directed my way. Life has granted me the time, friends and necessity to de-personalize most of this. But, what I just discovered, is that I, and other overtly disabled people like me, are the advance guard. We are on the same continuum as everybody else. The old are being treated just like the disabled. They are made invisible, irrelevant, and treated like a drain on society. Its easy (relatively) to cast me off because I’m visibly broken, its also easy to cast off the grey, slow, forgetful, aging ones. If you don’t think you are being cast off just check-in on how isolated and alone you are, and look around and see how many of your friends are old and grey just like you.

I sometimes hurt when older people don’t see my disability, because then they are also not seeing the truth of their own aging. I’m lucky I don’t have chronic pain, but I do have chronic awareness. I feel, through some other means than my body, the emotions of the moment, the tides of awareness, the reality that is to hard to take. For better, or worse, I reside there.  I can feel the cost that everyone is paying for not seeing what is hidden in old age, disability and our basic human-ness.

I am big, vital, articulate and full of Life, so people frequently don’t see me as disabled. That is good because I’m more than broken down, but not seeing that I am also disabled, that I am struggling just to keep up, negates who I am, and worse yet, ignores the fragile humanity of the latter years. Old age is feared because it is treated like a disability. I can say this because I recognize it, because I am there, because I want more from, and more for, my kind.

Growing older is nightmarish, but it also provides glimpses of how heaven is right here within reach. I think these glimpses, which reside in the failing sight of the old, and the disabled, are precious, and should be a regular part of our collective journey into mystery.

A Prejudice Against Leaders by Lucky

A tension is running through me. It seems to make a sound. That sound is growing louder. It is making me uncomfortable and anxious. I want to write about it, to explore what it is, but I feel more nervous as I get closer to it. That is usually a sign of how much ambivalence I feel. I know the tension says something about me, and I’m not sure I want to find out what. I am really nervous about letting this part of my experience be seen. I will go ahead, because I am that kind of fool, but I do so knowing that I have mixed feelings about what I am looking at. I am aware of how much prejudice against leadership I feel, and I am becoming aware of what that says about me.

It is deep in my bones. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.  I grew up, in some ways, as one who learned to rely on myself. Some of my beauty is related to how much responsibility I have taken for myself. I like who I have become. All of this is true. It is only recently that I finally, after years of misdirection and suffering, came into my own. I have learned how to take care of myself. Now, I’m looking at how this hard won achievement is incomplete. I don’t want to relinquish and bow down to anyone. In so doing, I am seeing, I am unwilling to take responsibility for my deeply human partialness.

I want to be free of leaders, teachers, therapists, parents and would-be priests. I don’t want anyone standing between me, and the Great Mystery. I don’t like feeling small, undeveloped, inadequate, or somehow stupid and blind. When anyone has the audacity to presume they know or experience something more thoroughly than I, I usually don’t believe them, don’t trust them, and quickly dismiss them. I do kill them, but non-violently. They are still dead to me.

All of this, the indiscriminant killing, is my way of protecting myself against the unscrupulous charlatans out there, who would prey on my desire to be fully human. No body is going to take advantage of my developmental desire, my longing for wholeness. No more, will I hope that others will lead me to where I know I need to go. I know that is the only way one can go.

Oh but, I’m weary. So tired that I’m vulnerable. So tired that I make mistakes So tired that sometimes I wish there were someone else who could help me carry my desire a step further. But, if anyone comes close and offers in any way, I am deeply suspicious. They better be careful.  I am likely to turn on them. I want a teacher but he, or she, better not try to teach me anything. On the other hand, what good is a teacher who doesn’t? The truth is, I’m not very tolerant of either. I want to be fed, but primarily, only in my way.

I know this is true about me. I don’t like admitting it. I am so unenlightened, so human, so ordinary. I only admit it now to myself because I want to deal better with the prejudice I face each time I care enough to try to take on a leadership role. I’m also tired of being shot at, disparaged, reduced and otherwise mistreated. Trying to make a difference, and caring about those around me, is only partly vain, sometimes it is genuine. I can be human in that way too. But, I’m often wary of it.  I don’t like being the object of suspicion.

I know I have no real right to assume any role of leadership as long as I harbor the will to disregard others who are genuinely trying to help me along the way. I know I have no right to complain about being shot at as long as I hold a gun in my hand. I know I don’t handle it well, being the object of suspicion. It is precisely because I haven’t given up protecting myself in this way. I don’t want to go on and become the caring elder. Or, the leader, I could be. I am torn open. When it means letting go of protecting myself in this old way. Can I let myself learn from, rely upon, and trust an other?

I don’t have any say about the prejudice against leadership in the world. I will just have to learn to deal with it. I know I can start dealing with it better, if I am willing to begin right here in my heart. If I am on a course that will carry me ultimately into a real elderhood then I’ve got to trust myself enough that I won’t kill off the food bearers who are trying to help me along the way. Also, I know, I can’t really become one of them until I can admit their existence into my heart.

The journey toward elderhood has so many twists and turns to it. I keep meeting myself on this road. Strangely, I come in many forms yet I still have to deal with the same old one — me — if I’m going to make further progress along the way.

I notice too, that alongside the baggage of my old ways, the self I know, is a stranger, laughing, and accompanying me. I hope you are noticing something like him, or her, too.

What Makes A Difference? by Lucky

I’ve been dwelling with this question for a while.  Like any good, real, question it is taking me for a ride. What makes a difference?

Before I get into my response to this compelling question, I just want to extoll the value of a good question.  A really good question, such as this one, doesn’t have one right answer, and doesn’t lend itself to simplicity. In addition to asking one to reflect on a specific something, it asks one to let in the complex, incredible diversity of this world. That is what I hope to do, as I let this question lead me deeper and deeper into mystery.

My response to this question has been one that has unfolded. The question is still resonating within me. It is still provoking my awareness. Level-by-level I am discovering that I have very little reason to believe that I have any kind of response that makes the question go away. I am being skewered (changing one could say, the question itself is making a difference) by the uncertainty it is raising in me.

Initially, I thought this was a fairly easy question for me to address. I have been vocal and consistent advocate for community. On some level I know I believe that caring and real connection make a big difference. I have spent a good part of my life trying to restore the natural social habitat of our species. I really believe that our social nature, which runs wild in our feelings, is an endangered life form. I have spent, and probably will spend, the bulk of my life-energy working on behalf of this perception. I could compellingly argue about the importance of this issue. I have good reason to believe that community has big implications for our complex consciousness, our sense of belonging, and our future.

Therefore, you can imagine my surprise, when this question led me to a deeper more fundamental and miraculous realization. It was a week after I thought I laid the question to rest. I was satisfied with what I believed, and my efforts toward that end. Suddenly, I became aware that it wasn’t given to me, as a human being, to know what made a difference. I really didn’t know what made a difference. This was devastation to the part of me that was invested in community (in my own knowing). Miraculously, even with the loss of my precious illusion (and I could feel it/me dissolving), I experienced joy and awe.

‘Not knowing’ freed me. In ways I am still discovering. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the miraculousness of not knowing what makes a difference. Where I think I might feel bereft, I am discovering the warm pleasure of coming to my limitations. The fundamental paradox that everything makes a difference and nothing makes a difference places me in a wonderful position. I can’t not try, nor can I necessarily make a difference. Instead of being disheartened by my own ineffectuality, I am instead graced to know that I alone am not responsible for change.

All I can do is ‘show up.’ That alone is not enough. Something more happens, if change occurs, it is something I can’t make happen. My presence, and the energy I put into making a difference, add up to increased probability, but they are not decisive.

Or, things might change for reasons I cannot fathom. I don’t even get to be aware of all of it, there is no intention on my part. What makes a difference then?  There must be some other kind of ripeness to change. Things happen, I don’t know why. Maybe I am an ingredient of that change, but I am completely oblivious of it. I make a difference (or, do I?) without knowledge or effort. I don’t notice, or know. Shit happens.

I like arriving at this realization. It lets some of me off the hook (of responsibility) and strangely puts other parts of me more firmly on the hook. What do I mean? I am not sure yet. Play with this question a while and see what it does for you. For me, it relieves me of thinking I am that important. Apparently, I’m not. At the same time I am sometimes.

This floors me. I don’t get to know when I matter. Thus, I want to show up for everything —  I might be a necessary ingredient.

‘Not knowing’ seems to make me a more effective advocate for making a difference.

I’m savvy enough to know that when I think I know, I probably don’t. Now, thanks to this question, I am learning that ‘not knowing’ is probably the best way to advocate for change. What is ripe for real change is most likely beyond me, and my efforts. Change, therefore, is safe from me, and more likely to be change for change’s sake. Then, how I respond is how I aid change.

Making a difference is, and is not, up to me. Instead of that disappointing news discouraging me, I feel freed, and less distorted by my own shortcomings. Change happens, Lord knows how or why. I want to believe it can be directed. That some law of the Universe applies. Knowing that making a difference is to some extent my doing, and knowing that it is not, somehow ties me more firmly into the mystery of it all.