Those of us who have experienced the most – its good as well as its bad - have greater knowledge of the beasts of chaos and unruliness that threaten the earth today. We’ve learned the hard way that the darkness of the world is a reflection of the darkness inside us. We’ll learn to tame the beast of the world by taming it within ourselves.
When we’re young, we’re powerful in a physical sense. The strength of youth is not earned so much as given to you as a gift from nature. It serves a role that belongs specifically to the young: to procreate and build external structures that support material life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “As I age my beauty steals inward.” And so does ours. But we’re responsibility for making it visible. We can still be beautiful, but in a different kind of way. And the beauty of age isn’t simply given to us, as it was in our youth; it has to be earned. And it is often earned as much through suffering as through joy. Our failures as well as our successes, if processed and alchemized into the stuff of true character, can ultimately strengthen rather than weaken us. Our physical muscles cannot help us carry the weight of the world’s emotional pain—only spiritual musculature, often built through accumulated repetitions of heartache, can do that. This isn’t a deficiency in nature’s plan, but an economy in nature’s plan. We weren’t being beaten down; we were being honed.
And if we’re willing to accept it, age endows us with a spiritual elixir. Having seen the darkness in ourselves and others, we’ve become more humble before the light. Having been brought out of darkness, we’ve developed a devotion to He Who delivered us. Having made serious mistakes, we know how much forgiveness matters. Having suffered, we feel more compassion for the suffering of others. They’re not just abstractions to us anymore; they are principles that have infused our flesh. And they are the very things that make us more beautiful. They were not our defeats but our victories. We are strong now in ways we could not have been before. And our strength is needed. We are entering a time when our internal strengths, more than our external ones, will be humanity’s most important sources of renewal and repair. Layers of false power have given way to something far more real.
Whatever powers we might lose with age are small compared to the powers we stand to gain. There’s a profound satisfaction in finally giving up something meaningless, for no other reason than that we did it to the max and now we’re ready to move on. Midlife is about surrendering things that no longer matter, not because our lives are in decline but because they’re on an incline. Traveling upward, we simply let go of some baggage. Maybe there’s more natural wisdom in what’s happening to us now than we think. Of all those things we can’t remember, is it possible that any of them are completely unimportant? Could it be that nature is demanding rather than just requesting that we simplify? The only way we can peacefully age is if we have respect for the demands of the experience.
It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but sometimes it’s a relief to get to finally slow down. You realize “slower” is not necessarily “worse than.” The speed of our former years was not as constructive as it appeared to be. Moving too fast, we often missed a lot. Many of us made big mistakes we might not have made if we hadn’t been moving through life so quickly.
I remember when I was young hearing Otis Redding sing, “Sitting here resting my bones . . . ,” and thinking, Who needs to rest their bones? Now of course I know. And when I first had the thought one day that I was just sitting there resting my bones, I panicked. I thought it was all over if my bones were tired! But then I realized something else, like a guilty secret: I was enjoying just sitting there. I wasn’t attending a Buddhist retreat trying to enjoy just sitting; I really was enjoying it! I was enjoying the kinetic experience of a rocking chair in a way I had never thought possible. (“Oh, these things are actually helpful! Who knew?”) I didn’t feel the need to get up, to go somewhere else, or to do anything at all. With less adrenaline came less distraction. I felt no need to justify my existence by achieving or performing a thing. And that’s when I realized, This is very different but it isn’t bad.
Sometimes what we appear to have lost is simply something it was time to leave behind. Perhaps our system just lets something go, our having moved through the experience and now needing it no more. A friend of mine was sitting once with two of his best friends, a couple he’d partied long and hard with during the l960s. At about ten in the evening the couple’s twenty-something daughter came home, saw them on the couch, and admonished them, “You guys are so boring! You never go out!” To which all three responded in unison, “We were out, and now we’re in.”
The mind is its own kind of dance floor. What a mature generation could do from our rocking chairs could literally rock the world. If in fact the highest, most creative work is the work of consciousness, then in slowing down we’re not doing less; we’re doing more. Having slowed down physically, we’re in a better space to rev up psychically. We are becoming contemplative. We are shifting from the outer to the inner not in order to begin our demise, but to reseed and regreen the consciousness of the planet. And that’s what is happening now: We’re going slower in order to go deeper, in order to go faster in the direction of urgently needed change.
Dear God,
When I rest may I rest in You.
Transform my weariness
into readiness for something new.
I open my heart
and pray for Your guidance.
At last, I am ready
to change.
Amen
The words above are from my newly published MIDLIFE AWAKENING: Creating a Miraculous Next chapter. If they speak to you, I hope you’ll check out the book.
Age arrives with lots to process. But sometimes it’s the most weary heart that has medicine to give the world.
The timing of this new book couldn't be more perfect..Thank You☺️
Yessssssss, REMARKABLE Marianne, thank YOU!