I stumbled across the words
above many years ago. I didn’t know who Rainer Marie Rilke was then. But, his
words had an effect upon me. I think at the time they were just so contrary I
remembered them, and even more strangely took them to heart. Now, looking back,
I’m surprised by the impact they have made on me, and even more surprised that
I had the wisdom to have remembered and even navigated by them. That peculiar
delight, is not the reason I am choosing to reflect on these words, and the
experience they embody, instead I am compelled to look at how they capture
something about our lived experience, that I find somewhat miraculous. In the
difficult, I find, there lives a grace that changes everything.
As you may know, I have
grown to believe that my life is not my own. My so-called life is Life’s life.
The rigors of a life lost, and the advent of a disabled/enabled life, made all
of this clear to me. I am a representative of Life, whether I like it, or not.
Life has brought me back to being human again. And, this time, I’m feeling so
much more, and I’m aware like I never have been. I seem to have a kind of
non-conventional awareness I would never have cultivated. I exist here, but not like I would ever have
imagined. My mind seems to have a wild canniness. This leaves me breathless,
embarrassed, wondering, and so awed. I like it, am often afraid of what comes
to light, and I never feel abandoned, orphaned, or alone. The Universe seems to
me to be both my playground, and the one playing me.
All of that contributes to
my returned attention to what is difficult. There is something here, some
twisting, mobilous, mystery that makes me want to sit-up and pay attention. I
have been roughed up by Life. I don’t have any illusions about that. I was
hurting, afraid, and pissed off for a long time. Sometimes, like for instance
when I’m struggling to get dressed, or I can’t for the life of me understand
something I know is simple, or I have dropped something on the floor for the
third time, then I can still get pissed. But, more often now, I just laugh.
Life, being me, is ridiculously impossible, yet here I am.
Life has really come through
the hardships of my life. I have been changed, amplified, challenged to my core,
concentrated, baffled, and made more whole while being reduced to a quivering
mass. None of it was my doing. Life just picked me up by the back of my neck
and did me over. I went along…… crying, hopeless, helplessly quaking, and
thinking there must be a better way. There never was, and I’m coming to
believe, there may never be.
Life delivered what was left
of me, to a different, better state. Someone asked me recently if I could do it
over, would I prefer anything different? “No,” I said. It seems Life roughed me
up, just right. Since then I’ve come to believe that Life is the Teacher, Guru,
Enlightened Being, nudging me toward home. And, I now see that Life has a
repertoire of stimulants that goes way beyond what I would wish on my worst
enemy.
“Hold to what is difficult”
Now I take these words of Rilke, to mean that where life seems to be cracking
up, it is probably cracking open. This is, as the poet Leonard Cohen points
out, “where the light gets in.” From where I sit now, the personal breakdowns, painful
relationship snags, and group times of chaos, are all the breakout of Life. It
may be asking more of us then we can deliver, but it isn’t abandoning us. The
difficult is actually Life.
Life frequently asks more of
me than I want. Life can be a nuisance that way. Sometimes, mostly, I resent
it. Once in a great while, I feel grateful. Life keeps stretching, and ripening
me. I actually grow up. It is all somewhat unbelievable! The thing I don’t want to go through, is just
the exact thing I have to go through, to be a me, worth being. There is a kind
of symmetry and strange inhuman justice here that just silences me.
No one could have adequately
explained any of this to me. My parents, probably in their deepest roots, were
as baffled as I am. Sadly, I think they succumbed to the virulent, and rampant
belief, that something must be wrong with them (or the rest of us) if the
miraculous wasn’t obvious. I can forgive them.
Can I forgive me, you, the rest of us? Yep, if I am willing to hold
to what is difficult.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com
(2010 thru 2013) and http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com (2014 on)
To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com
To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of
Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net
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