Do Not Look Back

Rumi, world-renown 13th C Persian poet philosopher and teacher wrote: “Do not look back, my friend. No one knows how the world ever began. Do not fear the future. Nothing lasts forever. If you dwell on the past or the future, you will miss the moment.”

Pain had been consuming me for weeks. Consumed by the pain, I became a complaining, unhappy old lady. A friend from the west sent me a card and the above poem. Of course I was happy to receive her message, greatly touched. I shared its message with others, then came up short; those in their mid-seventies and under thanked me, asked me to repeat so they could write it down, or asked me to email them a copy. Those closing in on 80 and up, however, came back at me: “What’s so good about the moment? My trouble is the moment. Why do I want it? What’s wrong with remembering the past when I wasn’t in pain, wasn’t taking pills, wasn’t helpless” and on and on they went as I reluctantly found myself nodding in agreement.

Back in my youthful 70s and yoga-teaching days, I ended each class with a prayer of my own devising and the exclamation as we stood and raised our arms: “Old Is Magnificent!” I do not feel magnificent today. I feel lousy. I have grown brittle, tire easily, hear poorly, no longer see that well, find little joy in eating. I, once was absorbed with good cooking and good food, see no way out of the problem. I am alone, living almost exclusively on Social Security. A comparative new comer to Burlington, there is little continuity in my life or companionship from a shared past. What few friends I had have either died or left the area. There is no family nearby. What’s more, I find Vermonters, I regret to say, do not reach out easily to a single, old woman. Younger people, with energy and ability to participate actively are more readily embraced. With public transportation almost an impossibility, without a car and limited walking capacity, it is difficult to take oneself to events of interest, particularly in bad weather. I do not pass judgment merely state a fact. Each of us justifiably becomes embroiled in our own lives, families, problems, parties. It is hard to keep up ones own obligations without taking on someone’s else, especially an old someone else.

Back to Rumi and missing the moment!

Unable to take a sleeping pill since the doctor had ordered only one a night, I was restlessly tossing and groaning in exasperation and self-pity when, for no reason I can think of, up came the Rumi poem. Also up came my former bitter thoughts as I muttered a disgruntled “Sure, sure! Missing the moment am I? Do I give a damn about the moment! What’s to like about it! I know too well what I can do with this kind of moment going on, well yes, moment after moment placing me smack into the Who Needs It Division!

Then I sat up straight in bed, yes, I actually did just that, to exclaim “But this is the moment and it’s all I have.” I can want it to change, I can hope it will change but it doesn’t change and I cannot expect help from others. Already my children and grandchildren –plus caring friends– have given their best efforts. Sure, they, too would like it to be different, would like to help more, but they cannot. It just is.

And, bingo, it came to me there in my bed on that dark early morning, in that silent room the words and thoughts I have been uttering for years now to my yoga classes: “It is not how expertly you perform the postures that matters. What matters is the attention you pay, the effort you exert, the concentration and recognition of practice in and of itself is enough. That’s all of it. That’s the moment, the moment you are not missing.”

Bringing me back to my Bingo Moment: I cannot change the situation. I can, however, change myself. I can realign my concentration, my yoga practice --bad as it now is. The result is both elegantly dramatic and frighteningly traumatic. I want to talk about it to see if I can bring you into this new, self-healing realm.

I still hurt like the very hell. I haven’t grown a whit sprier, no, nothing has changed except my reaction. It has made such a difference I want to share it with you , explain how it is being a frail, ragged, aching nonagenarian with not a single recourse except my own, very private heart and mind set.

Much as I want, I cannot evade a decision; Either I re-evaluate my sense of self, or continue wallowing in grief and despair dragging friends and family with me. I have decided to seize the moment, to turn it into not exactly one continuously blooming rose garden but at least into an occasional, sweet-smelling rose.

Will you join me?

To All Who Wrote in to Me...

I am grateful beyond measure for the responses I am receiving from The View From Ninety. They are too numerous for me in my fragile health to answer individually, though I would certainly like to. Some of them have cheered me enormously, particularly those writing of how they will call or visit their grandparents. Those that mention changes in attitude toward older men and women.

I have spinal stenosis. It is difficult to sit too long at the computer. Thus I write this blog to all to say sincerely and simply: "May your know joy, deep-down, uninhibited joy; May you have the courage to do and the courage to be that which you want to do, that which you want to be; my your spirits find peace and your hearts practice compassion. This is the wish I extend to each and every one of you."

Please be sure to check back soon for more entries.

The View from 90

We all have views, no matter our age, but none view life in quite the manner that we arthritic, wrinkled, hurting truly old men and women, i.e., 75 and above. In a class by ourselves, we are, so why evade or belittle our being here. We have choices: instead of cringing, diminishing, or spending a cosmetic fortune to cover the signs, we are in a perfect space for facing it fearlessly, wrinkle by wrinkle, whilst quietly acknowledging, even affirming our accumulation of years! It’s not fun being old, curtailing activities. But I notice many far younger youngsters struggling equally hard to make a go of it.

The concepts about age in relation to human beings has taken a remarkable turnabout about within the past 30-odd years. When I was in my 40s, everyone, including myself, thought of me as middle aged. Today middle doesn’t begin until 60; old until the late seventies.
When I reached ninety my view definitively altered. Bigger and badder physical problems confronted me, resulting in considerable limitations on my daily routine. Despite those limits I gain nothing by diminishing or belittling them. I have learned the hard way, believe me, to look more inward, accept whatever age I’m in. I recognize the futility of beating myself for being ninety. I am already physically beaten enough as it is. So I cry ashamed upon those who cringe or hide from the old label. I cry ashamed, even though it isn’t fun, even less fun than it was at eighty! I must learn to acknowledge, not compare.

Thus, here in my Ninety Viewing, I try to be defiantly here. More, I challenge those who seek substitute designation such as “senior citizen,” “mature adult,” “fragile elder.” Most of all, I balk when people think they compliment me by protesting: You’re not old, you’re far too young in heart. Young in heart is not a compliment. I am old in heart. Only the old, those of us who have conquered time, suffered life’s despairs can know the exhilaration that consumes us when that despair is turned suddenly into a quiet, inner exhilaration by? by? well, like yesterday when an unexpected V of geese appeared across the evening sky. Ninety sees that V differently from nine, say, thirty-nine, or whatever.

Old is courage, stamina, guts, wisdom, understanding. Old is gentleness, joy, continuity. Old is defiance, acceptance, patience, sensitivity and compassion. And viewed in its proper context, old is beauty of singular radiance, a beauty achieved through the individuality possible only through aging. As Madeleine Engle writes in Two Part Invention, “there is little character in the face of someone who has avoided suffering, shunned risk and rejected life.” It is literally impossible to reach one’s 70s without having experienced risk, known suffering and obviously not rejected life. We’re here, aren’t we!

Sure, old inevitably means some kind of pain or other. There is sadness, loss, fear, helplessness, vulnerability and terrifying loneliness. There are old suicides and old alcoholics, but there are also youngsters sharing these statistics in alarming numbers.

It rankles when fellow old ones hide behind the euphemisms listed above. Bestowing such a tag will not smooth one wrinkle, improve vision, straighten gnarled fingers. Do my grandchildren love me more if they think of me as a Senior Citizen rather than an Old Lady?

By the time we’ve reached our late 60s, we’ve hit an impasse. We’ll not get smarter but we do get wiser. We are the sum of our lifetimes and calling us seniors merely belittles that lifetime. (I was a senior in high school, in college). We’ve made our beds and now lie in them. We can face that impasse with philosophic acceptance. I know each day holds a new experience, maybe not a cheerful one, nevertheless a new one. I accept its positive-negative sides with a tolerant good will impossible for impatient youth to understand because we are wiser.

Philosopher Plato and educator Mortimer Adler span millenniums to declare in unison: not until one is in the sixties can true wisdom and knowledge be attained. Audacious Nineties, me insists that without that knowledge and wisdom our happiness takes on a speciality unattainable to youth, if we are willing to make the effort. I.E., the rainbow friend Bud and I saw last week: I submit that despite his obvious pleasure, my nonagenarian view held a more impassioned grandeur simply because of my many previous rainbow-viewing years, causing it to reverberate with heightened sensitivity.

Without question youth bestrides the world with enviable vigor reveling in its belief that it alone has discovered joy, laughter, passion, celebrating as if exclusive to youth. However, not until they have grown up, find themselves facing the implacable wall of antiquity will they realize there actually are unsuspected enchantments round many a corner exclusive to old age.
I am not alone in these views. We increase in multitudes. We enroll in classes, pursue new careers, volunteer, rally at the ramparts, lunch, go the Flynn, a movie, contented and excited in a way only old crones can be in its supportive comradeship!

I want to initiate a crusade that honors old age, not demeans it with palliative metaphors. I want old to stare unashamedly into the faces of those daring to deflate our dazzling singularity. I want banners -- figurative, at least blazoned across high-and-by-way declaring old for what it is, a condition that raises us to an exclusive class in and of itself, setting us apart, giving us the respect we deserve, admitting the enormity of our blood, sweat and tears. I especially want my peers to acclaim their longevity, majestically acknowledging our elegant stage of life with refreshing (albeit clouded) eyes at our formidable day by day victory of our survival.

I am old in heart and those who have yet to view the world from ninety haven’t a clue about the giddy joy and pulsating passions (and I mean “passions” in every sense of the word) roiling through our aching, ailing bodies. It is precisely because of those bodies that we are so eminently capable of resonating to the muddied miracle that is our life.

I have always cared about my appearance, still care. But I do not hide the old, merely enhance it. True, on wakening I run through the depressing laundry list of ailments but, as an eighty-three chum recently responded to my inquiry about his health, “if I don’t find something hurts when I get up I begin to wonder if I’m still alive.”

I look up at the YES silk screen poster above my bed. It strikes me with resounding impact that I have another dichotomous good/bad day ahead inevitably accompanied by the enervating pain, but also a chance to stroll by the lake, listen to V P R, read, call a distant grand child. And hear this: I've begun a new routine. Upon arising, I go to my mirror to laugh (not at myself, just laugh) Amazing how it does the trick, places a more positive perspective upon that laundry list of ills.

Old furniture, old paintings, trees, dogs, even old baseball cards for heavens sakes, have value. Why shouldn't old men and old women! We must be affirmed. “Attention must be paid,” lifting a line from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Attention, consideration, respect. Yet, equally important, we old must take ourselves in hand, convince ourselves of our majesty, our rights to that attention. Once we throw off sodden seriousness we just might transform those around us: Laugh and the world laughs with you. Respect ourselves, others will follow suit. Wear old cheerfully then more cheerfully the world will regard you! Easy? Hell no! But it works!

Ergo: I stamp my feet and pound the table asking you to join me in redefining old. Instead of treating the word as a put down, an apology, what say we redefine it as?...as?...what?
Would you go for Original, Legitimate, Die-hard!