My wife and I have been spending a lot of time lately with Elders and older friends; visiting, taking care of them, participating in ceremonies with them.
And one of the things that’s pretty obvious is that people are starting to get older – ourselves included. We’re starting to move a bit slower; starting to do a little bit less.
But things are getting deeper. Conversations are getting deeper. Ceremonies are getting sweeter. And the prayers are getting more honest…
Carl Jung once said that “Unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”
That, right there, seems to be the core of so much of the work that so many of us who come at the world from the perspective of adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional households are doing every single day.
When we grow up in an environment that’s unpredictable, chaotic, we learn certain survival skills. We learn how to read the terrain. We learn that we either have to keep ourselves low – to stay out of the range of fire – or we learn to lash out in anger in order to make ourselves bigger, stronger, and less vulnerable.
And until we start to explore these things – even later in life, because they’re rooted so deeply, we find ourselves involved in the same types of situations over and over again, the same dysfunctional relationships.
It’s like we walk into the same story again and again, only the names have changed, and the characters are slightly different…
I used to wrap up my life and the way I was living in a story kind of similar to the following:
“I am the way I am because my dad was a drunk.”
Or
“I am the way I am because my mom was a very frightened woman who raised me to be dependent on her and poured her fear into me.”
And I was good with that. I knew the way my world worked. I knew why I was the way I was, and that was it.
And that’s the thing about blame. It’s a very easy handle to grab onto. It gives you some security, when you think you’ve got your life all wired out.
You understand the way things are.
And you can move into that story, and you can feel safe there — even if it’s turbulent…
I’ve been talking with several people lately about the way things are in the world, and there seems to be this general consensus that even though the external world – the social world – seems pretty chaotic right now, there’s this feeling that the ground we’re standing on spiritually, even emotionally, is pretty solid.
It’s as if we’re being asked to bear more weight, so we’re given a solid foundation to stand on while we do it…
Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever had a moment in your life where something shifted at a really deep level?
Maybe you’re not even sure what it was, but you just felt that change. And you knew that if you said “Yes” to it, that things would never be the same – that there’d be no going back.
And yet, somewhere, deeper down, you also knew that saying, “No” just wasn’t an option…
So, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the backyard lately, taking care of the ceremonial space that our Community uses when we come together on the first Saturday of every month. It needed a little work, so, I’ve been out there doing that, and it’s me taken a couple of days to wrap things up.
At the end of the first day, I was sitting out on the patio, surveying the yard, taking in my work, and as I looked over at that spot, I was hit with the feeling that the energy of the place had shifted dramatically; that the work we’d be doing there would be different from now on.
It would be deeper.
The place felt like it had grown up, like it had become more rooted, become more… solid.
And I also knew without a doubt that I had to say “Yes” to it, and that once I did, there’d be no going back to the way things were before…
Well, seemingly in spite of some of our best efforts, Spring actually came.
The daffodils are starting to open. The hyacinths are pushing their way up through the dirt. The walking onions and strawberry plants in the backyard are really starting to take off.
And the best part is, none of this required a damn bit of effort on my part. It all just kind of happened on its own – the same way it always does…
One of the hardest things to do — especially for those of us who’ve carried a lot of pain for a lot of years — is simply to sit with it. Sometimes that pain shows up as body memories, sometimes as emotions or old stories that seem to rise up out of nowhere.
They can get into our heads, start pulling the levers, and before we know it, we can start acting out into the world in ways that might not be too nice.
And then comes the aftermath…
Today’s a day for knocking out a couple of writing projects. Tomorrow and the day after, we’re looking at windchills of way below zero. That’s far too cold to be out in the shop, when all that stands between me and Siberia is a kerosene heater and drafty old garage door.
So, it looks like a few days of laying low and tending to indoor stuff.
Lately, I’ve really been leaning into letting my life do its thing. I was joking, just the other day, that being retired is actually my job. And after these last few years, I think I finally might be getting the hang of it.
When I was in the 9-5, I really liked having an agenda. It was good to know the what’s and when’s, so I could schedule things accordingly. Now the work is typically catch-as-catch-can.
I won’t lie; it took me a while to acclimate to the shift. Not that my last position was the busiest job in the world. I was a trainer, so there was a lot of hurry up and wait. But I travelled some of the most congested roads in the Metro Philly area, so my days often ended up being pretty long. And I ate up a lot of tires and brakes on that gig.
Now my commute is two small flights of stairs, and the only thing I need to replace is my worn-out bedroom slippers. To be fair, though, I’ve probably gone through 5 or 6 pairs since it all started…
When’s the last time you actually created something – just thrown yourself headfirst into the process of simple, radical creativity?
There are a lot of videos out there lately, and a lot of people talking about how necessary it is to make things right now—especially at a time when there’s so much turmoil, and so many people who seem to be bent on destroying things.
The act of creation is a balance to that…
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately and talking a lot with others about the idea of being of service. Specifically, how do we assist those who come to us looking for advice or help of some kind, especially within the context of their own emotional recovery or spiritual healing? Where do we draw the line on our own involvement? When does “help” turn into “enabling”? When does our desire to assist turn into our own need to fix, save, or rescue the person that’s come to us?
If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Bonja the Bodger 