MindfullyAging

This will be a work in progress, probably for weeks, with much editing. The primary focus, at least from my current standpoint, will be health. Health in the sense of self-healing. Handling physical pain. Handling worry. Handling emotional yukk. Handling sadness. Grief. And, alongside this, will be breaking through isolation. Finding recreational moments, putting fun back into my life. Silliness. Goofiness. Playfulness. Touch. Therapy through intimacy.
Additionally, I need to address the lack of contact with nature and the lack of meaningful (therapeutic) contact with individuals. And, I need to get through shoulder surgery and rehab, and get back up to competition speed in the pool. Also, it has been decades, five! decades, since I studied science – never my strength in the first place. Astronomy, geochronology, paleontology – these interest me. Finally, I need to go through a reconciliatory process with my church, i.e. the place where, as a youth, I was handed a s**tload of infantile garbage about being born in sin and needing salvation, etc. etc. The usual misinformation and indoctrination.

About self-healing.

In a very practical sense my life, when taken as a whole, has been successful. My seventy years have been without major trauma, AND, these days I’m learning that there’s a better way to go than to ignore or distract myself from the moments when I’m down. I’m learning to embrace such moments, actually use them as a way of maintaining a sense of well-being. I am Mindfully Aging.

“Huh?! What are you, some kind of masochist? Embracing pain. That sounds whacked out. Using paid to feel good? I don’t get it.”

“Yup. You DO get it. Once you take yourself off in a quiet corner and shut off the word machine so you can feel what you’re feeling, then you’re at choice. You can let the suffering have its way with you and pass through it, or you can postpone, and let it continue to eat on you.”

“Man! Are you some kind of Zen dude, or maybe a Buddhist? Around here, at least where I come from, we don’t do the suffering thing. We just get on with it. We reach for the gusto. We’re looking to have a good time. That’s what success is about. Not going off to an isolation booth somewhere and feel miserable. Heavens! That sucks!”

TO THE READER
[Any comment is appreciated. For those so inclined, continue the dialogue in whatever manner suits you.]

Seen as a quickie personal history I’ve managed to:

*retain much of my country boy self that my childhood gave me
*live all of my adult life without debt
*save enough to live out my years
*find my way back home after a couple of decades of adventuring
*avoid fighting in a war (Viet Nam)
*see my children through college
*stay out of trouble with the law
*dissolve a failed marriage and
*steer free of subsequent relationships that would compromise me
*survive single parenting of three! on a below poverty line income
*spend extended time living outside the USA on several occasions
*acquire near native proficiency of a couple of foreign languages
*not beat myself over the head for having failed to get a PhD
*experience the relief of having a soul mate enter my life
*do professionally, for a number of years, the thing I’m good at
*put together a highly active retirement life
*have virtually no health problems throughout my years
*enjoy mental and emotional stability as well

I ask: is this not a picture of success?! By comparison with most any other person’s life, surely this has GOT to be a winner. So why am I not elated? Am I not proud of what I’ve accomplished? Simply said, I don’t get a ride out of this sort of comparison. It’s an empty exercise. And I think all these feathers in my cap derive from others, from my parents, my grandparents. The advantages they gave me. Personally, I’ve not yet come into my own. It’s been a relatively secure life, for sure. My forté has been avoiding significant exposure, avoiding risk. But now, before I pass into the (hopefully brief) part of my life where I’ve lost my faculties and have become unresponsive, I want once again to walk with the sense that there’s a whole ‘nuther country out there waiting to be discovered.

So what would success be? Stepping out of the box?

I’m perched on the vine like an aging grape. To not fall off and whither away I’ve got to do SOMEthing. I don’t know what yet. I’m using 43Things to figure it out.