Me! It’s all I know. Actually, it’s an exaggeration to say that I know myself. But it’s someplace to start… I have experienced spontaneous bursts of self-expression throughout my life, but mostly I shut myself down. Once in a twisted cry for recognition I put my writing on the curb in front of the apartment where I was trying to make a life as a single mom. I equated being an adequate parent with sacrificing myself. It didn’t work.
Why share my odyssey with the world by publishing my thoughts here? Well, I’m in search of a voice. I’ve been talking to myself all my life. Now I want to talk out loud. Even I can hear myself better that way.
Striving to find a voice at my age! It’s a little discouraging to realize I never had one. And exhilarating that it’s not too late, that “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” (George Eliot, though some would argue this.) I’m making a practice of writing every day; surely I’ve been told often enough throughout my life writing is what I should do. And it’s in my Irish blood. Still, my ageist inner voice denigrates it, makes comparisons to late-in-life sports cars and tap dancing lessons. And whether I view it as a desperate impulse, a last attempt at fulfillment or a step forward in an evolutionary process that will continue beyond this old age, I might as well do it. Because, what’s the difference? I need a project and I’ve decided to make it finding my voice.
I’m 73 and i feel like Holden Caulfield. Observing the world, abashed and apart and dismayed and often disgusted by what I see. Even if I am striving to be non-judgmental! In fact, this striving is what I think about almost all the time. It slaps right up against judgmental thoughts that flood my brain endlessly. Observing these judgments dispassionately is the key to letting go of them, I’m told by various meditation teachers, self-help authors and gurus. And don’t judge the judgments! Think of them as comments. So I observe the comments, exasperated by how many of them there are. It’s shocking. They’re even worse than my external comments, which once led a co-worker to describe me as “acid rain.” It was and after thirty years still is very painful to acknowledge his poetic precision. I am psychologically astute, but to my sorrow, only with respect to the bad stuff. It took me a long time to realize that there’s more than bad stuff, that I could apply my insight to finding the good. I thought my negative views were unusually clear-sighted. Now I am attempting real transparency, to describe what I see without inserting myself at all, without attributing motives or interpreting. When I lived at the beach and was experiencing a little spiritual growth spurt i attempted to study the Course in Miracles, but gave up after when first lesson: to look at the leg of a table and acknowledge it was without meaning. I tried to get my head around that but couldn’t. “Of course it’s without meaning,” I thought disgustedly, “I never said it had meaning.” Now all these years later I begin to glimmer that I am assigning meaning to everything I see, and my meanings are meaningless…
A wonderful writer (whose name I can’t remember, haha) said: once you turn seventy, face it, you’re old. Jane Fonda notwithstanding, I might add. Upon reaching the milestone, and urged on by a co-worker who knows about these things, I finally began to think about making my end-of-life arrangements. I’d felt a nagging awareness of the necessity to plan for years, but I always succeeded in pushing it to the back of my mind. I had other priorities on the weekends, like doing the laundry or going to the farmer’s market, or getting my hair cut. At first I was elated to be taking care of business at last. I was happy that soon I would be able to cross this pesky chore off my to-do list. The reality of choosing a container for my ashes and trying to figure out what to do with them deflated me, though. It was all too real. To be honest, I was bummed.
Plus, it led to a kind of life review in which I came to the realization that (a) I have not succeeded in becoming world-famous as my mother wished, (b) nobody needs me any more, and (c) some people find me annoying. It was a little surprising. That was a month ago. A consultation with my sister-in-law at her home in the Sierra foothills last week was comforting. She told me that many people share my feelings.
Then today, an epiphany: I may yearn for the tender bondage of being needed, but on the other hand I am free. Further, I’ve been trying to do the right thing all my life and I haven’t been very good at it. I think I’ll stop trying now. More to come.
As for being annoying, there’s not much I can do about that.
Perennial Beauty 