Last evening a friend phoned in tears. She needed a friendly voice on the other end, just an ear which I was so happy to bend, or lend, for she is dear to me.
She was able and willing to tell me the source of her grief. She had ventured to an event on the island on which we both live, which used to be the highlight of the summer. People would gather for a wild evening of dance to African drums, as part of a drumming workshop held annually, which was always well attended and brilliantly taught by those who have been mentored by the best in Africa.
The evening had been sparsely attended, the regulars who had been the mainstay of the ensemble now either dead or had moved on or lost interest. It brought to her mind the many friends that had died over the last five years due to illness. It was a reminder of her age, of the passing of the known world and much that had been of value that had once flourished and now was no more, or was now unrecognizable, unfamiliar.
For us die hard liberals living south of the border, the tears of my friend are multiplied millions of times over and over these days as we all are having to let go of the country of yesterday, the values which made it the most liberal democracy in the world, the envy of the world. We get to work and walk in a world and culture not of our choosing, even as inadvertently we may have co-created it. Still we are in grief, for all that is passing, dying or being actively decimated.
Such is the nature of impermanence that all the mystics, the wise ones, of all traditions speak of. Things change constantly, everything we love and are attached to will be taken from us at death, but before that, we will, if we live long enough, bear witness to change, to endless change: our friends, our families, our society, our country, and our planet. We may be buoyed by some of what we see, we may be deeply encouraged by the changes, or we may not be. Either way, they will occur because life is not static, ever.
For any one of us who have walked around a spiritual block or two, for any one of us who have lived a few decades, we like to tout or spout the notion of impermanence, as if we have signed on for that, because we understand the irrefutable truth of it. Yet, and especially as we age, so many of us crave, long for and yearn for permanence, for stability, for the certainty the sun will rise, that we will see it, again and again. That our houses will stand, will withstand the storms that threaten to blow them away or wash them away, that they will still be there after the next hurricane or flood. That our beloveds will not get old, sick and die, that we will not get old, decrepit and die. That maybe we will be the exception.
We yearn for exactly what we know is impossible, unattainable, unlivable. How each of us cope with the devastation of these two incommensurable facts is so personal, so individual as to be a fingerprint on destinies’ door. How do each of us cope with this hard and persistent dilemma, the yearning for stability and the unattainability of what we yearn for? We duck, hide, pretend, fight, collapse, turn our backs, or puff out our chests. Sometimes, like my friend, we have the courage to stop and just have a good old weep. Feel the grief of it all, the horizon getting closer, with two impossible strands pulling us apart or breaking us open. That much we get to choose. Right?
Like the perfect bell curve, we start and end life, (assuming we live a full lifespan) in the depth of ‘not knowing’. How paradoxical that in our older years, exactly when most of us yearn for quietude and certitude, is precisely when we are faced with the greatest of all unknowns. How and where will we die, of what, how will it be, will there be pain, will we be alone, with family, at home, in a home or hospital? Will we be lonely in our aged lives? At peace, rocking on the front porch with knitting in hand, watching a rural sunset? My personal fantasy, is that I die in bed, sucking on a square of my favorite chocolate, in a bed with freshly pressed linens, smelling of lavender, after having given away all my favorite things to my favorite people. Having laughed till I cried one last time, watching Peter Sellers in “The Party’.
Whatever the fantasy and hope, it’s unlikely to unfold in just that way. Life throws wrenches into our plans and our dying days are physiologically designed to help us let go of our hold on life, so chocolate and lavender sheets probably will not be on the menu. But whatever unfolds, few of us know exactly how we will meet our end, until we actually do.
On a walk the other day while I was voicing my fears ‘de jour’, my husband, Thomas, said just one thing in response, ‘Can you trust that your life so far has equipped you with the resilience to meet whatever comes’? The immediate answer to that question was ‘NO’. The deeper truth is ‘I don’t know.’ I, and I suspect many of us, discover that when in the midst of ‘it’, whatever the ‘it’ may be, we rise. But do I know for sure that I can, or will, that we can, that we will. Living with that added uncertainty becomes yet another unknown, when I would so much prefer to have surety, at least about my capacities.
Consulting with a young client this week, I was impressed by her enormous terror of not having ‘certainty,’ security, not being able to nail down her future in relation to her partner. I quipped, a little too flippantly, ‘The only certainty is death.’ While that may indeed be true, it is also true that she mirrors some aspect of what I too would prefer, what many of us may prefer. My response to her didn’t. at the time, reflect that acknowledgement, but I also realize that we live on a continuum of ‘uncertainty tolerances.’ Her tolerances were particularly low, mine vary, certainly more flexible, but also less tolerant now in older years when indeed, it would be preferable to be the most tolerant. That seems to be one of life’s petty ironies and jokes. Should one be in the mood for a chuckle.
Most of us have to meet our deepest uncertainties anyway, as a matter of course, as we move closer to the edges of our lives. When our bodies and our habits are stiffening, paradoxically our minds and hearts have to go the other way, into more tolerances for the mysterious unfolding of not knowing, for staying loose in the face of uncertainty.
That is the question I lean into as I grieve and give space to others who do likewise. That is the question that now takes precedence over the fears of the day. The simple fears of mere mortals who cling to this lonely spinning orb, this minuscule “pale blue dot” in the great unending ever- changing universe. When we step back to contemplate the scale of the great ‘all’, (as far as we know it), and the infinitesimal place we occupy, our concerns and our desire to hold onto certainties, any certainties, register as pure absurdity. Pure unabashed absurdity. But it is human absurdity and we carry it, this need, this unattainable need.
At this time in earth’s history, our history, the wave of change in all aspects of our geo-political, social, environmental, technical landscape is so massive, it will have its day and way and we may, if fortunate, have each other, may have tender ears bent to hear, arms ready to hold, places of connections, those occasional in depth conversations that touch the core of our values and heart, all the while loving each day and those that share it with us, the creatures, human and non-humans, the critters and creatures, the flora and fauna, all that is good, of beauty, wonder, of value.
We may even cast a compassion gaze upon our all too human absurdities and unattainable yearnings, which may, in turn soften us as we stride, day after day, into our uncertain futures.
Those are my thoughts this September. I’ll leave you with a couple of poems which speak strongly of change, as we enter into this season of falling leaves, the lessening light, which heralds the coming of winter.
Love to you,
Priya.
