Elder Relationship

“two solitudes salute, border, and protect each other.”

                                                                                                      Ranier Marie Rilke

Recently I was at a meeting where a friend of mine (someone I admire) brought us to discuss one of the most important attributes of elders that is emerging today.  He had recently compiled a list of conscious elder developmental characteristics (see below), which he shared with us.

•   Essentializing                                              •  Letting Go

•   Embracing Paradox                         •  Embracing Uniqueness

•   Facing the Unknown as a Way of Life       •  Increased Tenderness

•   Increased Awe                                            •   Presencing Evolution

•   Re-becoming Playful                                  •   Welcoming Death (as Ally)

           

This list prompted a discussion. It was a good thing Xan was there, because between the two of us, it was clear something was being left out. For us, relationship had changed significantly, and we now considered that attribute to be one of the most important attributes of elder life.

Here is my best recollection of what we added. It had become clear to us that aging brought with it, to some people, a decrease in the tendency to be emotionally reactive.  This increased relationship capacity mightily. In our case, it meant less conflict, greater emotional intelligence, and a much greater capacity to talk about what mattered. We found we could rely on the sharing of honest perspectives. We could also explore feelings and thoughts together, thus we knew a lot more about where each of us stood.

There was also a genuine intrigue into our differences; instead of being put off, we found these differences increased our sense of reality, and actually became something that would bring us delight and insight. We were constantly finding the world was much bigger, and more complex and nuanced than either of us thought. Relationship, for us, involved more engagement with each other’s “otherness” than we had ever experienced before.

Added to that was the fact that both of us could “hold onto ourselves” like never before. Life experience with our selves translated into a deepening capacity to relate to another. There is something heartening about the freedom to be oneself, and to be with someone else who has that same freedom to be them selves. We have never had a lot of power struggles, or anxiety about someone feeling forced to be some way.

All of these elements led us to have more intimacy than before, and they have created a relationship field like neither of us had experienced before. Some of these skills came because of who each of us is, but some have appeared unbidden, they are the consequences of getting older.

On a more general level, I think it fair to say, that older people, at least those that have kept themselves alive, have acquired  a capacity for interdependence, that is, a greater skill at relating with the complexity of Life. This is a development many old people don’t know about, despite the rising capacity they may feel in themselves. In my opinion, the Universe is a relational place, and now with  ripening, we humans  are also capable of relating, like never before.

The upshot is, that with aging I have become much more capable of understanding someone else’s need for solitude. I am also much more likely to admire and protect our mutual solitude. I now know that our uniqueness, our feeling of freedom, of belonging to ourselves, our place in the spectrum of things, depends on it.  Without trying, I have become a much more relational being than I have ever known myself to be, and that development seems to rebound to the benefit of everything around me.

The Precariousness of Life

I had to go down, despite all of the relationships that buoy me up, the careful support structure I am grateful to have around me. I sank somewhere into the darkness, beyond all the resources of love I knew. It was a descent like none I’ve known since my stroke.

And, it reintroduced me to a vulnerability I don’t want to know or feel. Yet, I do. 

Grief has carried me into the realm where I have become Lucky, and felt the enduring connection that calms and sensitizes me. Here, I am surprised by the vibrancy of all that lives, and by the incredibly precious precariousness of Life. This is a vulnerability that adds a great deal of poignancy to the vital connection that carries me, and is responsible for my delight in what exists. This level of vulnerability shocks me. It puts me into a state of necessary wonder. I share it with you now, hoping that as I do so, I can find a better way to be with this perception.

My knees begin to quake. I can barely stand this awareness. It takes all of my resolve to remain in touch with this level of poignant strength and fragility. For a moment I curse the paradoxical sensitivity that has come over me as I have aged. It allows me access to what seems too much. I don’t want to know the suspense of being. I like feeling connected, knowing myself as an almost insignificantly small part of the whole, but a piece never-the-less. I can, I have, lived with that. But this, the experience of how everything trembles before emptiness, this awareness, puts me on edge.

Can it be that everything can exist in some improbable way that seems always as if it could collapse at any instant? That perception makes me tremble. I don’t know if it is the improbability of it all, or the miraculousness of everything being here anyway. I want to creep everywhere, so I don’t disturb this delicate balance. Still I am here, and I’m obsessed with the human pursuits that have been allotted to me.

I don’t know what to do with this awareness. There probably is nothing to be done with it. I just have to feel the queasy uncertainty it sets off in me. The combination of the strength of Life, with its fragility, is just so mind twisting, so flabbergasting I’m unable to really grasp it. I guess this is why the Mystery stays so mysterious. I know that if I were really advanced maybe I could just sit with this perception. I might not even tremble. But — I’m not enlightened — I’m just overwhelmed.

Life fills up the darkness. It holds on, I don’t know to what. Maybe the reason for all the suffering is because something is entering and filling the emptiness. And perhaps, when this occurs, there is some time of incredible vulnerability, when uncertainty prevails, and another foothold, another niche, is being created. The whole process is miraculously exquisite and, for me, unbearable.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m really grateful that I get to be here, that I get to participate in something so dramatic and suspenseful. It’s just that I don’t know if I can settle my self down enough, being in the midst of such an unsettling drama? Maybe that is the point. I am more alive now than I was a while ago. Knowing of this paradoxical drama, what appears to be the drama of creation, not only shakes me, but it makes me more vulnerably alive.

My next breath is not guaranteed. It never was. I didn’t know that like I do now. There is a huge gain there, but it comes with an even bigger loss. I’ve been stripped of sureness, and left with uncertainty. I’m more alive because I’m more uncertain of life. Oh, the whole thing is giving me chills, or maybe they are quakes of life? I don’t know. I don’t know.

I used to like good mystery novels. I don’t exactly know how I feel about being in the midst of a good mystery. Life is a whole lot stranger than I ever imagined. Life is a whole lot more compelling too. Well, one thing I am certain about, is that I am here to live through this uncertain hour, this messy hubbub. I have been taken on a thrill ride of major proportions, which seems to hold both terrible and incredible surprises.

I’m becoming a very twisted soul, by enduring the arduous and miraculous twists of this fragile and enduring precariousness. I’d like to ask you, how you bear this whole incredible and heartbreakingly beautiful mess? But then I’d be asking you to share with me the way you relate to it, and I know that that would be to ask you what it looks like down your rabbit hole.

I’m giving you a glimpse of mine, I hope it helps.