On (Not) Minding Mortality
When I opened the page to start an entry, I found the following two paragraphs that I had begun last year. Let me tell you, I was in a really different place then than I am now, so it is not the same entry I would do today. Still, as I read it, I thought it was important to show the contrast and reflect on that for a minute. The original title was Minding Mortality. I felt like that needed to change too, so I changed it slightly as you can see.
One unexpected realization of practicing mindfulness has been that I am more mindful now of my own mortality. That's probably due to my coming to the practice at this particular age; I'm fifty-five. I used to tell people that weight, not age, was my worrisome number. There have seldom been days in my life when I did not think about how much I weigh. Still do. I am happy to report that with the discernment that has come with getting older--and with having a generous life-partner--I now have a more peace-full relationship with my body. I have healthier reasons for wanting there to be less of me. But, age. I didn't mind turning 50; in fact, I was proud that I didn't mind. I was traveling, meeting people, enjoying life. That year I had an extended episode of cognitive dissonance--a mid-life crisis, if you will--about the meaning of life. Not just "the meaning of life," but the meaning of my life. That is why the title of this blog is so important to me. It indicates a moment at the crossroads when focused, deliberate thinking was imperative. I remember distinctly the day when I took a different path that led to here. I didn't know then that it had to do with thinking about mortality, but I see now that it does. If I had been content that my life had been meaningfully well spent, the dissonance would have been a lot less jarring.
Three years later, at fifty-three, I began grappling with the awareness of not having as many years left as I have lived. I started expressing my consciousness of it in small ways at first~making joking references to being put in a nursing home by my kids as my parents had done. Confirming my beneficiaries. Then one day I told Sarah that I would really like to get a diy project done so that I could enjoy it before I was dead. And it wasn't a figure of speech.
So that was last year. Since then, some imbalances have righted themselves after a good deal of grieving, and I had a bit of re-adjusting to life to do. Once again, I felt like I was emerging from a cocoon to a new day of opportunity that beamed the question, Who do you want to be? Except this time, the question was not out there alone in the universe for me to orchestrate a response to it. The question that settled on me like a warm sweater is, Who does God want me to be? I gotta tell you--when a question like this is put in the way it was put to me--well, I commenced to find the answer. Trust me, I'll work through more of it here; the way the path opened up is, at least to me, fascinating--sometimes a little scary.
What is a good ending for the post from a year ago? As with most things, age and one's location on the continuum of birth-to-death depends on how you frame it. And for me, it's the difference between the two questions, above. Lived for myself, each day, each week, each month would be "one less." On the other hand, resting--existing, thriving, living--in what Marcus Borg might call the more-ness of God illuminates the moreness of life.
For Tracy. Remember:
Marty Robbins The Master's Call
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