Posts
I've been re-reading Pema Chodron. Someplace she talks about impermanence—the impermanence of everything in life—situations, emotions, states of mind—and how we can be "up" one minute and down the next. She said that this impermanence, being an indisputable fact of human existence, is within each of us. So the depression that you feel is not yours alone. The elation that you feel is not yours alone. All emotions rise and fall, come and go in everyone. It turns out that your instability is not YOUR pathology but the pathology of the human condition.
I've heard this all before, as have you. But this time it seemed to have an impact beyond the usual. Maybe I actually took it in this time.
I have spent many hours of my life reflecting on mistakes I have made. Pema Chodron's words neutralize the blaming and help me realize that my stupid mistakes are simply one of the ways I learn; they are no more stupid than your stupid mistakes. Now I need to figure out how this knowledge will change my approach to living.
While I'm thinking about that, I will also be pondering a different idea. "Eternity" is not some time in the future, something that starts when you're dead, which is the impression I got in catechism class. Eternity is now, and we experience it most immediately when we are in the moment. When I am absorbed in watching pancakes breathe, then I am in eternity. When I actually notice the artful beauty of shifting shadows as I ride the escalator north of Finch and Yonge, I am in eternity. Perhaps "eternal beauty" means not that beauty goes on forever—although maybe it does—but that paying attention to the beauty of the moment puts us into eternity. Something else to think about.
"Hesitating at the gate" is beginning to turn into "pounding at the door." Does that work as a juxtaposition of metaphors? Let's see. While I'm hesitating at the gate of age (although I seem to be losing the option of "hesitating"), who is pounding at the door? Certainly not me. Is it fate? Life? Death? Oh, it's so easy to talk in abstracts. Let's get up close and personal.
Eyes. Finally the optometrist explained to me why I can no longer move freely from light to dark and vice versa. I used to could, as they say in the South. But now when I move from bright sunlight into the dark of a subway station, I must stop for ten seconds to allow my eyes to adjust; otherwise I can see nothing, and I'm afraid of tripping or running into someone. I didn't used to be this way, and I shouldn't ought to be this way now. But the optometrist said it's because our muscle reactions slow down with age. What was once an instantaneous adjustment now takes countable seconds. Embarrassing seconds, until you stop being self-conscious about aging and just accept this new development as yet another aspect of your reality.
"You're only as old as you feel" doesn't cut it as a motto, since my eyes "feel" fine. My legs are ready to move right on into that subway station. But if I don't step aside and give my eyes the time they need to adjust from light to dark, then I'll definitely be sorry.
I keep coming back to the same thing: change. I imply often that I'm handling it fairly well. I know change is coming. I accept it willingly. Well, delete "willingly." I accept it with as much good grace as I can muster at the moment. And yet a lot of that acceptance is purely theoretical. Do I really accept thinning hair? No comment.
Do I really accept sagging skin? If so, why am I running down to Body One for another jar of Marie's small-batch face-cream-for-aging-skin? Surely I could just slap on some Vaseline or olive oil and be done with it? I'm cherry-picking just which age-related changes I'll accept and which I want to fight. I choose my battles.
I'm fine with the big-ticket ones (like dying) and the less visible ones (like that memory thing). But these external markers—mobility, hair, skin, body shape—bring back my never-quite-relinquished need to control.
Not all truths about aging are painful. Here's a truth: my husband and I are enjoying each other's company more than we ever have before. Is this a manifestation of our joint Intimations of Mortality? Is it finally a realization that our idyllic life will not last forever and we'd better enjoy it while we have it?
Another truth that I must reveal: it isn't easy. Well, I thought I had more to add to that sentence— as in "it isn't easy to . . . whatever." But it turns out that those are my final words on the subject: it isn't easy.
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment