We've allowed ourselves to become obsessed by youth.The way this has shaped our public lives is quite easy to see, from the relentless focus on youthful beauty in our media to the cruelty of causal ageism in the workplace.What's harder to see is how it is affecting the narratives we have about ourselves.We see all the ways that growing old is a falling apart, an endless series of losses, a disintegration. And so we try to stave it off, denying what is happening to us. As we grow older and as the time remaining to us diminishes, we become diminished in our own eyes. In this way we rob ourselves and others of our dignity.But here is an account of ageing from the Jewish mystical work, the Zohar, which points to a different possibility:
All the days of a person's life are laid out above,one by one they come soaring into this world...If a person leaving the world merits,he comes into those days of his life,they become a luminous garment.
Such a different way of looking, this - our inevitable, inescapable ageing as a gathering and weaving of the days of our lives into a single luminous garment. We wear the sum of all we have been and done in our bodies, on our faces, in our entire way of being in the world.This gives us growing older as an integration, a chance to unify ourselves, turning towards the shadow parts that we pushed away when we were younger.And it invites us to give up our dependence upon looking good or being liked, so that we can have our ageing usher us into the fullness of our humanity.
Photo Credit: aka Jens Rost via Compfight cc
When we're feeling fear, sorrow, anger or emptiness at the world - or at any situation we find ourselves in the midst of - perhaps it would help us to remember:That when we speak our fear we draw on the courage and dedication it takes to speak;And when we express our sorrow it can arise from our love and care for what has been lost;That we can speak about our anger best by finding the commitment to justice from which it comes;And that our emptiness, our sense of what is still missing, is also the possibility from which something new can arise.Every anguish, every sorrow, has its truest ground in a kind of dedication, hope and love. And when we can remember that, rather than just the anguish and sorrow, our chances of being able to contribute with dignity are deepened and widened and made more real.
Our primary needs as human beings:Warmth, shelter, food.and then:Touch. The loving gaze of others.Being welcomed by smiling faces, simply for being alive.Community.A way to express our feelings and experiences truthfully, and to be heard.People with whom to celebrate, and with whom to grieve.Intimacy with others, and with the world.Nature.A way to belong.Being of service.Art.Beauty, wonder.Encounters with the sacredness of things.It is the nature of our primary needs that, when met, we feel filled, complete, connected. Nothing more is called for.The consumer economy in which we live is dedicated to meeting secondary needs - which are a pale imitation of what is primary. Our secondary needs, even when met, can't fill us. They leave us wanting more. And as such they are ripe for the sale, for the making of profit.So it should be no wonder that our primary needs are marginalised, often ridiculed, in our education system, organisations, and politics. Why have real contact with others when there's no money in it? Beauty, when it will satiate rather then create demand? Intimacy, when it interrupts our addiction to the latest products? Deep joy, or deep sorrow, and contact with what's sacred, when it stops us from feeling like empty vessels that need continual filling? Why do anything if it can't be linked to productivity, or profit, or economic growth? Why do anything that will have us stop our restless, rootless consumption?You could say that it's the systematic marginalisation of our primary needs, and the worship of the secondary, that keeps our whole economy going in its current form.But it's in meeting one another's primary needs, needs that can never be met in the form of a transaction, that we are most fulfilled, and most able to take care of what really needs our care.
Lizzie and I were live again this morning, The source for this week's conversation was Mary Oliver's powerful poem '
It’s amazing how often we assume our requests can be heard while ignoring the capacity of others to listen to what we’re asking.Some examples:You made a request by email
It's a small shift, but a potentially profound one.What if you choose to see what you're in the middle of right now from the point of view of a year ahead? Or ten years? Or a hundred?Or if you were to watch this moment in life from the viewpoint of the moon? Or from the far edge of the galaxy?From here, what changes?Do your worries and fears have the same hold?Do the same things seem important?From what are you freed?What's called for, now?Sometimes, we need the perspective of a billion miles and an aeon in time to see what we've got caught up in that's trivial. And that what really matters is quite different from what we've taken it to be.
Even when we see that our endless busyness is stifling us, holding back our creativity and contribution, narrowing us - even when we see that in many ways it's killing us - it's so hard for us to give it up.Why is this?It may be in part that we're unwilling to stand out from those around us - to risk the feelings of shame and awkwardness that come from taking a stand that we call our own.And it may well be that we're unwilling to cease our busyness as long we're unwilling to face loss. Because to give up rushing will indeed be to lose a particular identity, a way of keeping our self-esteem going, and of course the end of all those activities with which we stuff our time. And we human beings can have a hard time with loss.It's only through turning towards inevitable loss that we open the chance for life to reach us.I think we ought to do that sooner rather than later. Because loss will be forced on us in the end in any case. And by the time it comes there's a real possibility that we've missed our lives because we weren't willing to choose to face it earlier, of our own accord.
Ordinary life can seem so - ordinary - that it's natural to slip into taking it for granted, as if it were obvious and straightforward that we're here, and as if it will go on this way for ever.Many traditions have practices to remind us that it's anything but ordinary to be able to move, breathe, think, make breakfast, travel, work, love, argue, sleep, produce, write, speak. And that it's anything but ordinary to have a body that can do all this again and again, which can heal itself so often without us having to do anything. And that none of it lasts nearly as long as we might hope.Here's a morning blessing from Judaism, said by some as they use the bathroom for the first time in the day, that I think is particularly brilliant for its combination of straightforwardness about life and death, piercing insight, and gentle humour.
It's easy for us to hide in plain sight.We hide in our busyness and in our distraction.We hide by saying only part of what's true, and withholding the rest.We hide by leaving parts of us out - our courage, our vulnerability, our truthfulness.We hide by throwing ourselves into our work,and thereby saving ourselves from showing up outside it.And we hide by throwing ourselves away from our work,and saving ourselves from showing up within it.We hide in our addictions, in numbing ourselves, in scrolling the facebook feed.We hide in pretending to be happy, when inside we're crying.We hide in our self-importance, and in overdoing our smallness.We hide behind rules and regulation, policy and procedure.And we hide in meetings through our silence and compliance.We hide by shutting down our hearts in the face of the suffering of others.We hide by stifling our ideas and holding back what only we can say.We hide in our pursuit of money and status.We hide ourselves in looking good and avoiding shame.And we hide by refusing to ask for help when we need it.And every moment of our hiding robs us, and the world,of wonders that only we can bring,from seeing that only we can see,and from words,perhaps the most necessary words,that only we can say.