Emotional Reactivity by Lucky

I have learned that the greatest threat I face is not the actions of others, but my own reactions. As far as I can see, this is true for many others too. It seems, that when I have a big emotional reaction to something, generally I’m feeling how much I am unprepared to deal with that situation, relationship, or feeling. There are complexities I’m just not, myself, complex enough to handle. Instead, I feel something reactive, which if I was paying attention to me, I would use to learn something about me, but usually, I assume the worst, this emotional response must mean that the other, usually the source of these complexities, must be deliberate, dangerous and wrong. They, or the situations, are toxic, should be avoided, and are bad. I have learned that as soon as I diss the other, I am dissing me.

I am a little amazed at myself. Even trying to take my reactivity on, is a very brave (or foolish) act. Here lies one of my greatest weaknesses, and the source of a great deal of my shame. I hope some of this is true for you, too. Otherwise, I’m just going to feel like a flawed idiot. Instead of the perfectly imperfect human, I hope I am.

I have been guilty most of my life, of assuming my feelings give me an unerring way through the world. I have learned, through the prevailing cultural distrust of feelings, to trust them. I made room for my emotions in all of my life equations. The trouble is that I gave them too exalted a position. I weighted them too heavily, treating my feelings like they always gave me an accurate readings on things. I have suffered so much from that little piece of innocent arrogance.

A lifetime of such mistakes has added up to, with death’s help, a little humility, and a great deal of humble pie, and gratitude, to a new more realistic perspective. Now, I can see my emotional reactions are honest, sincere and accurate. They just say a lot more about me, than reality, or the other. Now, that I’ve learned to read in them, I see my own responsibility and culpability, I have come to a more faithful knowledge of myself. My feelings are trustworthy again, it’s just that now I’ve learned that they paint an accurate picture of me, instead of the truth of anyone or anything else.

Emotional reactions, once I oriented myself appropriately, are useful. They are constantly bursting through my self-delusional thinking, and showing me what I need to know about me. They are exceptionally grounding. I may not like what they reveal, but I’ve learned to appreciate the guidance they offer. It is deeply re-assuring to know there is such a good guidance system built into my being.

But this little adventure into awareness isn’t really about how constructive emotional reactions are, but it is about how destructive they can be. They are like the hungry family dog. Not above manipulation, especially well-aimed intelligent manipulation, to get fed. Emotional reactions are definitely pointing, just not toward anything outside. But, if one isn’t careful, one could believe the honesty they convey, and be thrown off. Emotional reactions are kin to anxiety and fear, they can help in creating false realities. There is nothing worse than tilting at windmills that aren’t there. Except maybe, being mistaken for such a windmill.

I personally don’t like it when I, or anyone, lets emotional reactions run the show. It’s too much like living too close to a nuclear meltdown. My life is contaminated with the spill of really vile components. I’ve been really hard on my environment. God knows how many relationships I’ve spoiled, all, in the pursuit of something honorable.

It has taken me a long time to really grasp my feelings. The journey is strewn with my refuse. But, I have learned. Thank the Universe! I’ve grown old enough to die with something under my belt. I’ve learned enough about my own humanity that I can appreciate the difficulty others may be having with their own nature. The mess I am now, the lostness and awe I now regularly experience, is just an affirmation of what a long and strange journey this is. I am happy ageing has given me the opportunity to grok so deeply.

“Hold To What Is Difficult” by Lucky

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.

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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

Solitude & Love by Lucky

I’m taking a six-week break in my relationship.  My partner and I have agreed that each of us wants this time off, to balance our relationships with ourselves, with our relationships with each other. This move is re-introducing me to un-diluted solitude. I’m finding something in my solitude I didn’t expect, I hoped for it, but didn’t know what would be possible for me. I’m finding, there is a relationship between how I feel about me, and how I feel about my significant other. Solitude is deepening both. Through this process, I’m learning that being alone, which is difficult, grows my relationship with me, which in turn, grows my regard for her.

There seems to be some paradoxical relationship between solitude and love. The more I am alone, and come to love myself more, the more love I have for my partner. This sounds like some kind of fusion, a confusion of our being mixed together, but it actually only evolves when we are apart. Go figure! Life has apparently set-up an elegant paradox with very exacting parameters. “Know Thyself” becomes “Love Your Neighbor.” But, only if I spend the time alone to really get to know myself.

Take for example freedom. My partner is more free to be herself, more free to find out for herself what that means, because I can handle being alone. My time alone liberates her, as she is figuring out for herself her own liberation. A friend of mine calls this “co-liberation.” To me, this is what relationship is really all about.

The German poet Rilke correlates loving with solitude. He points out a special aspect of solitude, which if cultivated, is to “become world.” “Become world in him [or her] self, for the sake of another.” The idea of becoming your self, and containing the world, for another, is the ultimate in expansion and freedom. The whole idea of becoming fully one’s self, being the development that frees the other, is counter – cultural. Isn’t love supposed to be a multiple-party thing? Isn’t it about mutuality and collaboration? It seems that there is a connection, but it is more complex than just being about holding hands and cooperating.

I find being alone, even when I am able to turn it into solitude, hard. The hours seem to scold me, and I feel challenged to find the creativity to engage my self. The day can stretch out, and I am often revealed in ways I wouldn’t have guessed at. The mirror of solitude, for me, has been flawless, despite my protests. Strangely, I like this. Self-revelation tends to sober me, and settle me down. My anxiety about myself abates. I have a more accurate picture to work from, and that, despite not always being pleasing, sets me to working on what really matters about my life. Plus, each night I tuck myself into bed, and I know my life is being lived out, the best I can.

This thing about becoming myself, and that being the most loving thing I can be doing for my partner, awes me. I want her to know I am real. I want her to know that when I touch her, the world is saying “you belong.’’ I want her to feel movement inside, some sense that the Universe is moving too. None of these things are possible, so I’m learning, without my experiencing them in my solo life. It is in such moments, moments alone, where I experience the invisible link that joins us, and I know that all along we have been part of something larger than us, that joins us to one another. It is alone that I am more likely to cry from that knowing.

Solitude also breaks my heart. It reminds me of the real benefit of remembering my existential aloneness every moment. I don’t know about you, but I would just as soon forget how alone, and responsible I am, for my own life. That forgetting, which I do all the time, is revealed in my solitude, to be the reason I don’t recall the miracle that attends our being together. When I forget all of that, I treat us both with disregard. I miss the miracle that is going on.

Solitude isn’t just freeing for my partner. I guess that is what is so compelling about it. I walk taller (in this case, sit taller) through this life, when I admit, and this only happens when I love what the Universe has created in me, that my being here is no accident. I may not know why I’m here, but I know, that despite all the bad scientific advice I’m getting, I belong. I’m the universe expanding in a totally unexpected way. So are you. Imagine that!  I do, especially when I am alone.

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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

Message To A Young Activist by Lucky

I was born in 1948. (On flag day, to a military family.)  I lived on, or near, Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases all my childhood. I first became aware of the atomic bomb when I was 10. It was always on the bases where I lived.  My Dad was missing for months during the Cuban missile crisis. My first concern was nuclear annihilation. It wasn’t until after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, that I became aware of the virulence of the environmental devastation I saw around me. It was during those years, when I didn’t expect to live to be 30, that I became an activist.

That means that I have been aware of devastating things about human nature for over 50 years now. I emphasize that, because I’ve aged in this world, which always seems to be teetering on the edge. During those many years, I’ve repeatedly felt great urgency. I’ve seen something of the greatness of humankind, and had years to wonder, at this specie’s destructive tendencies. My sense of justice has been sorely disappointed. And, as I awaken today,  at 66, I am a man who has grown up under the shadow of our kind’s carelessness.

Over these years, I’ve attended many protests, meetings, and participated in a variety of actions. I’m still doing so. The reason for this note is to let you know that during that time I’ve learned something. As a result of how life has progressed, and matured me, my activism has changed. I went from an angry (and scared) young person, full of righteous indignation, to a much more humble and strategic old man. Activism has become more about how I engage in daily life. Now, all of my actions happen here where I am. I am the agitator and the agitated.

There is a split in the activist community, a painful and debilitating one. The fault line seems to run between those out on the protest lines, and those in, looking at their own culpabilities. These two distrust and undermine each other, and even deny that they are related. This hurts the coherence and effectiveness of movement. It has become a great source of pain for me, hearing anyone disparage someone else. The inner and the outer are both part of the same continuum. Cut either one of them off— devalue any expression of peace — and you have a differing, but equally unjust, form of oppression.

It has taken me a long time to learn that lesson. I didn’t have, what I call now, the ballast of maturity to keep me from acting in a distorted way. My behavior, in addition to inadvertently aiding what I fought, was frequently unjust. That pains and humiliates me. Because of the pain, humiliation, and loss to my self-image, I have come to realize how hard it is to see the cost of this one-sided approach. I really despair when I perceive activists treating each other as if there is only one right way to engage. And, I don’t know how to tree-sit the tree sitters.

So, here is the essence of this message. I am flabbergasted about how to proceed. It took me a long time to learn about the value of integrating inner and outer. I think others deserve the same chance to learn, in their own time. But, waiting around for others, to age into a different perspective, adds to the fire, the perception that the fire brigade is caught up in shooting water as much at each other, as at the fire. This awareness is hard to bear. So, I reach out, and write about this dilemma, because I hope others will perceive it, and also speak out, and I hope that in some way, I can shorten the learning time of those I pray for.

I have learned to live a life that is filled with tension. The central reality of my time, here on Earth, has been the paroxysms of pain and disappointment about the degradation of our home. It violates the environmental ethic I picked up as a boy: “Leave the campsite better than what you found.”  I am not in favor of mass suicide. Nor am I in favor of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Some of us are have learned to be persistent, patient, and pained. The world — our birth place — is calling. It is praising those who feel moved to help it, and it is exhorting them to come to the task naked, shorn of human certainty.

Aging has taken away my activist’s clothes. It has left me naked, wrinkled, stooped, and still alive, perceiving the miraculousness of this creation, and calling out with the world. Life has come, is here, and will go. Now is our chance to provide the honor it deserves, and we can best do that, through honoring each other.

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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