Reduction

I’ve been lucky. I have learned something that is changing my life. I sort of knew this, I had an inkling from my time of darkness, but I had no idea that what I was encountering had such widespread impact. What I refer to, is something that grew clear for me as I heard the important stories of others, who were knocked off of their trajectory and simultaneously put on one that was more complex, meaningful and liberating. What I experienced was the way that Life reduces, and paradoxically, enlarges one. This paradoxical part of living is news to me — very good news — and the type I want to reflect on.

Reduction, which is what I’ve been calling this ordinary/extraordinary part of Life, is a strangely new awareness, even though it’s been working me from the beginning of my time. I have only put it together, realized this was going on, recently. I guess it is an elder awareness. I needed a lot of life experience to see this pattern, this corner of the deep dark woods. Now, this place doesn’t seem so dark.

The paradox of reduction is a shiny new awareness, I’m just beginning to take in, so if I say something about it that you already gleaned for yourself, forgive me. I feel like a kid with a new toy. Now I can play at a new level, in a whole new way. To know that I’ve been accompanied by something that grants me just the right challenges, the ones that set me more firmly on the road that is most apt for me, is like playing on a trapeze knowing there is a better than safety net beneath me. Falling is a blessing!

I awoke on Friday morning, like I sometimes do, with the feeling of energetic lucidity. This morning it was like the firebird the Phoenix had come to perch on my mind. I was taken by its elegance, beauty, power and elasticity. Change was natural to its bearing.  On this morning my imagination was given very specific reign. I was captivated by a glowing symmetry. Life took away while it gave. Like breathing allowed me to live, the paradox of reduction/enlargement, allowed me to fulfill my self, the mission that insured my uniqueness.

It was like I am a kind of bell. I resonate for a long time. Excuse the noise. I find myself in various states of excitement. In one moment I am taken by the enormity of what has befallen me, and then I plummet over a whitewater-like cascade of realization that this is a secret that knows how to protect itself. I am thrilled into wanting to communicate what seems to be a miracle, then I realize that no words are capable of conveying this experience. I am delightfully baffled.

On a slightly more mundane level, I, being the intrepid fool I am, keep trying to find ways of describing the miracle of love that seems to underlay our lives. So far my nearest effort has been the one Alexandra brought to me. Being a good cook, and an artist, she is somewhat familiar with the ways of creation. Using a metaphor from cooking she was able to capture how something could get larger as it was being made smaller. Reduction is a cooking method where a substance, usually a sauce, is put under duress and made smaller, to bring out, and intensify, its essential nature. As one reduces a sauce, one also brings out of it the inner qualities that make it most flavorful and nutritious.

Apparently, back to the big picture, this is how Creation proceeds.  It knocks us down until we are just right. One of the most delightful aspects of what I am discovering is that reduction seems to draw out what is most essential. Something innate, and already there, is drawn forth. I like the idea that I’m being assisted, along my way, towards becoming more fully myself. When I let this in, I feel very wanted, like I exist for a specific reason. That perception relaxes me, right here in my skin. Can you imagine that, what is most essentially me is wanted. Wow! You can feel why I awakened!

The firebird hasn’t finished with me. I am more awake and thankful then I was, but despite a lifetime of direct experience, I can hardly believe the incredible luck that has come my way. I know I don’t live like I am wanted, like I belong, like I know this, my part, of Creation is unfolding right now. This is the challenge of my existence. I let my self get mesmerized by the surface of things, and give up touch with the deeper more essential nature of the moment.

I find that, despite how easily I get distracted, I am reassured by another idea/reality/perception that has come my way. I have reason to believe that part of the reduction process involves ripening. Age is paring me down, and along the way, I’m gaining experience, becoming more essentially me, dying before I die, becoming more as I become less. Reduction seems to me to be a primary way Life has its way with me.

*          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *

For more pieces like this go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com

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 go to www.davidgoff.net

Play and Freedom

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I’m not sure how to approach it. You see, I think this is a sensitive topic. Before any of us can be fully free we have to face what keeps us bound. What keeps us bound is sometimes our own doing. Most of the time, in my experience, people are reluctant to face their own culpability. Maybe this is only true of me, but I don’t think so. In any case, I don’t like knowing I am responsible for the bondage that seems to prevail everywhere, especially, and most poignantly, amongst we older folks. I’m referring to ageism, the form of prejudice we haven’t tackled as a free society, because we are so attached to it.

I want to write about freedom and play, but I know I can’t really get there, can’t feel that such a discussion will really touch reality, unless I go through ageism. What do I mean? The prejudice that seems to drive ageism prevents freedom and good, healthy adult play. I’ll explain how, but in so doing, I don’t want to forget, or ignore, the role in maintaining this deadening prejudice that you and I exercise. Yes, I’m calling us bigots. That is hard to acknowledge, hard to stand behind, hard to feel, and even harder to experience regularly. I mean it’s one thing to be a bigot, and it’s another thing to suffer bigotry. In this case, it’s both — people suffer at each other’s hands.

Here is more of what I mean. The belief behind ageism is that there is a natural limit to what is productive and useful. That sounds reasonable, but it is deadly when applied to people and play. People are assumed useless, too old to produce anything of value, and dismissed. Often, like street people or the disabled, they are made invisible. Play, especially adult play, is presumed frivolous, dismissed as unproductive, and ignored. It is treated, too often, like a waste of time. This all sounds like it is of marginal importance. That’s how deeply ageism affects the thinking process and deftly shapes our reality.

I am making the assertion that play, especially adult play, and older people both fall on the same continuum of ageism.  This has a major affect upon how much freedom we, as a society, will tolerate. Notice I said tolerate, not allow. There are some laws designed to regulate ageism, but very little discussion of its virulent effects, and even less self-regulation. It is as if, we don’t want to know, we do this to ourselves. It is no wonder we can do it to each other with such impunity!

So, who cares? Well, I do. As I have been growing older, I’ve been discovering there are a host of beliefs that impede my way. Ageism seems to de the most widespread and virulent of these beliefs. Not only is it prevalent in the culture; it seems to be internalized too, keeping me from knowing my own potentials, limiting my freedom by limiting my beliefs about my self.  I am crippled by my own beliefs. My mind undermines me. I don’t like it, and as I’ve been trying to go beyond these limitations, I’ve been finding that they run deep.

Here’s something interesting though, something that has inspired me to write. There is a way towards freedom, an antidote to the cloying limits of our culture and our own self-beliefs. Ageism, in fact all forms of internalized prejudice, are undermined by the practice of play.

Play, which looks like the most innocent form of growth, is just that, a fun way to discover the world. It isn’t productive, at least not in a cultural planned way, and is deeply generative. Play is viewed as frivolous, meaningless and a waste of time. This is, paradoxically, what makes it so liberating. It is a free activity. It isn’t necessarily free of all monetary weight, but it is free — when done for fun — without all measures of outcome. The freedom of play makes it, again paradoxically, the best agent of the new, unexpected and delightful. Lao Tzu, in Tao Te Ching (The Way Of Life), spoke about how what is, is aided by what is not. Play, especially adult play, is generative by not trying to be. Freedom is unleashed because play has no goals.

Play, however, resides on the same continuum of prejudice that we old folks are on. This makes it, like us, suspect and marginal. Play, which is delightful, accompanied with laughter, fun and great connectivity, has become invisible in just the way old people are unseen. Very often, no one takes the time, to really see what is there. We old folks suffer the indignity of being de-humanized. Play, which is an expression of freedom, is also unseen, and in its case, de-naturalized. A natural expression of Life’s unbounded creativity is turned into a pastime belonging only to childhood.

Play is a way to participate in the joyous, juicy, effulgent, ways of Life. Old folks, when they de-prioritize play, inadvertently participate in ageism, and more importantly cut themselves off from the energy of Life. The elderly usually need to conserve energy, and they also need to be fed the kind of energy that free play can provide. Play puts some cracks in the edifice of cultural belief, and to quote Leonard Cohen, that’s where the light gets in.

*          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *

For more pieces like this go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com

To hear archived versions of Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn about Embracing Life go to www.davidgoff.net