Chapter 4 of Ram Dass’s Polishing the Mirror was about aging, and while this is a topic that has always seemed so far away — so old — that it was a distant and potentially distinct future. Often for someone else. While we all get older every day, something that is readily forgotten as lost in our daily routines, this is not quite what Dass is talking about. No, not at all.
Indeed, when he said, “Until I was about fifty, I thought of myself as a teenager” (p 61) I stopped cold. You see, I am nearing that threshold and have always thought that about myself. The teenager, that is, the one with nearly unlimited potential and future and energy.
What do I want to do next?
I can do that! Who needs sleep, anyway?
Sure, let’s go. We can fit it in!
Why take a cab, let’s carry the bags of groceries and walk!
Alas, my first tip-off was that my coveted pattern of traveling with a maximum legal size carry-on backpack for any trip of any duration was increasingly a challenge. While I still travel with one bag and a small personal backpack, I just cannot do it on my back any longer.
To be fair, I can still lift it and carry it all, but it is no longer a comfortable way to travel. I love the freedom of a one-bag backpack, but the downside is not really worth the benefits. Since I do travel for work from time to time, my physical needs are now altering how I travel, and this is related to . . . aging.
“Much of the suffering of aging comes from holding onto those memories of who we used to be” (p. 62). We hold onto a past that no longer exists, right? Comfortable. Familiar. Youthful. Energetic. Or perhaps the glossy-eyed past really did not exist as neatly as we may recall it, and in so thinking about it, I think we have selective memories of the good ol’days. Alas, I know I do, though Dass has a manner of waking us from a reality that exists only within our own eyes, and in many ways invites us to see what some of those implications mean.
With the only real rite of passage (aging) being Medicare (still a while away, but still…), I am thinking about how the Indian traditions that guided much of his life has those of us in the 40-60 age range as time or inclination to study philosophy or engage in spiritual practices, it is no wonder why I, at my age and with already a couple of university degrees under my belt, has chosen to expand this via my studies at Cherry Hill Seminary. Where else would I have had this provocation to read Dass and consider how aging is like the natural cycles in nature, similar to the Wheel of the Year, where we are the wheel?
Yes, aging may be somewhat disorienting or disconcerting, and I choose to see it as an opportunity rather than a challenge. I prefer to reframe things in positive ways rather than dwelling on the negatives or lack of future orientation. To this point, “conscious aging has to do with letting go, which allows you to come into the present moment — into spirit” (p. 72). Perhaps, though the present moment can be grokked by anybody, yet doing it in a way that recognizes limitations and through them opportunities may be a step toward wisdom.
The trick just may be on how to consider my own personal aging while also consider its implications for ministry and spiritual support of others….
This posting is part of my ongoing, shared journaling related to the Formations for Modern Pagan Ministry course I am taking during the summer of 2017 at Cherry Hill Seminary.
You are welcome to join me on this journey!
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