"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
I’m learning something new about
“showing up.” I have spent years practicing the Four-Fold Way, thanks to
Angeles Arrien. In latter years,
I’ve counted on the belief that if an elder could just “show up” as him or herself,
such a person would change the world. It would happen automatically. Just by
daring to be present completely, an old person could embody a different way of
being. By “showing up,” one could exemplify choices and reveal possibilities. So,
“showing up” has always been a powerful practice. It promised me a chance to
serve by merely being myself.
A few years ago, when
writing Embracing Life, I realized
that the Four-Fold Way held possible synergies that could unlock even more
energy. I could see then, what I am learning now. When we combine “showing up” with
another practice from the Four-Fold Way, “surrendering attachment to outcome,”
or letting go, it becomes something even more powerful. It seems that I can
only “show up” so much, if I don’t let go of the outcome. This realization is
changing my life, and making it more possible to experience a deeper meaning in
Joe Campbell’s words.
An earlier experience of
this quote left me feeling angry. I thought, as I read it, that Campbell was
advocating for some kind of denial, a spiritual bypass of the agony in our world.
I couldn’t imagine “joy” showing up in the same sentence with “the sorrows in
the world.”
As I’ve grown older, that
earlier attitude began to change. I could feel something like that in what was unfolding
around me. Old people were growing happier. They were becoming more comfortable
in their own skins, more free and expressive, less emotionally reactive and
truer to themselves. At first, I was suspicious of these changes. They seemed
to be the changes of the privileged, those who were insulated from the woes of
the world. My own increasing happiness was suspect. I was, like my
counterparts, ripening into a deeper me, and becoming happier to be me. Life
seemed a better place. I wasn’t sure this was a good development.
I wasn’t convinced that my
increasing sense of wellbeing and happiness represented an improvement. How
could I be happier as the house I lived in was burning? “Surrendering
attachment to outcome” seems like a bitter betrayal of the Life on this planet.
It is tantamount to letting the house burn down. It may be an acknowledgement
of what I’ve always known and haven’t liked; I am not in control. Things go
their own way. But, giving in to reality, while a definite relief, seems like
abandoning ship, surrendering the garden to the gophers, and becoming
complacent at the critical hour.
Here’s where paradox,
something I have been learning about, as I have grown older, is important.
Letting go lets one be with Life, as it does what it will. The house may burn down,
and everything I love may go with it, but I will no longer be denying what is
true, which is, that Life is occurring here. I feel an increasing joy because
of my obligation to Life. I know about what Joe Campbell calls “the sorrows of
the world,” and I feel an obligation to respond to the call of the moment. I
can do both.
Maybe once, as a less mature
person, I held a black or white belief, that was an either/or way of seeing
things, but now, as an aging person, I am privy to a perspective that is paradoxical,
both/and, where my joy and the world’s sorrows coexist. I am happier, and that
happiness is filled with grief. It is a more mature and complex form of happiness.
The miracle, for me, is that
I couldn’t have gotten to this joy if I hadn’t learned to combine letting go
(and paradoxically gaining the world) with “showing up.” I am present in this
world of perfect imperfection, because I am no longer trying to make it conform
to some idea of perfection I hold. I couldn’t have learned this lesson, if Life
hadn’t insisted I live on Its terms instead of mine, and “showing up” and
letting go, brings me to that lesson.
I’m still learning and
happier for it.
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For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com
(2010 thru 2013) and 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
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