If the human person we are now, had five minutes to ask God any question, would we express gratitude?
Would there be a question?
Gratitude for the opportunities available in the lives we’ve lived – this lifetime and others. For all the realities to explore, to interrogate our enquiry of life uncertainly, as dangerously as we please in whatever state of being we choose. To observe the lives of others in their exploration of the possible, and seemingly impossible. For the ability to see and understand the difference between strive and strife, holding tight to our individuality and autonomy.
We might admit that our guiding desire is to show God we are capable of being His/Its/Her moral superior. Here and now, we are too limited in ability and intellect to seriously challenge a higher power – but we should always try, to be better, more than we seem to be.
Obviously, knowing our limitation doesn’t absolve us from a responsibility to try; to aim high, to challenge, to lose and learn. Learn not to strengthen fear by attacking it but to absorb and understand whatever it has to teach us, to join and simply disempower it with an understanding of its rationale, to see what we might become.
See who we are.
We all try to be as different from each other as possible while still fitting in; seems like a pretty futile exercise because underneath, we’re identical. The esoteric, the mundane, the deep and profound, the superficial and simple is within every one of us, being expressed and suppressed to different degrees as we maintain the veneer of difference.
All this work to make a difference, makes a difference to what might otherwise be an existence. Faced with such variety, it is difficult to understand why, in the midst of so much colourful diversity, there are some people who try to make all people the same, and work hard to make life the same for everyone.
‘Variety is the spice of life,’ a platitude disguising and stating the obvious, that we all share the same insecurities, trying to hide them in as many ways as possible, denying instead of embracing, instead of understanding and working with them to strengthen ourselves and each other.
Being born in separateness isolates us, and we keep this feeling, it’s sticky, making trust a difficult state to achieve. Allowing another person to see who we really are behind our veneer, is an honour. It is the greatest honour we can bestow on another person. But all too often, even those we love use their knowledge of our insecurities to demonstrate how powerful they are by exposing us, even to ourselves. These people are weaker than we are, using the trust placed in them against us. Such people should be pitied.
We can be here in, I think, mainly two ways.
Number 1, is broad spectrum, where we see everything going on around us all the time, with a focus on nothing. Not engaging or understanding. Not allowing time to analyse what we’re seeing before moving on, allowing life to wash over us, to flow around us into the past. Where does that leave us?
Number 2, is a focus – on US. On SELF. Where all we experience is seen as a gratification, pandering, mollifying and self-serving; or abusive, blocking our plans, attacking and thwarting our desires one subject at a time. Our attention flitting from subject to subject, becoming shorter as we seek instant gratification.
We need both. Number 1 is where Number 2 needs to live. Because we are not simply ego; we are part of a tapestry, a pinpoint of light on a thread with other pinpoints of light watching, responding to us and each other, forming the tapestry of life. Woven by us, overseen by God.
On the vine, on the tapestry, why are we attracted to specific lights? How do we fall in love? Why do we say ‘fall’? Is it because love is a lower frequency than the frequency of life on our own? Is it a fall because we surrender ourselves to another being? Is it really as low as that, or misdirection?
We don’t have to rely on luck with the Great Loves’ in our life. We plan before we arrive here and accept the responsibility for our lives, with all its challenges, opportunities, loves, successes and learning opportunities. The only times we should make the same mistake three times is when we are checking the Universe, making sure it’s operating as it should, correctly.
Marrying another, based on a mutual understanding, may not work for everyone. A concept which can be abandoned, or worked out. Deciding to go with our hearts may not work either. But a combination of head and heart can maintain a stable relationship – with the latitude for opportunistic forays with VERY trusted individuals, into the head and heart combinations. Sometimes much to our surprise and ALWAYS illuminating.
We might reconcile this with the question, which of your children do you love the most? If there is an affirmative answer, the next question is, which child do you love the least? Would you be there for them if and when they need you? Love is elastic; love is the most common element in the Universe, magnetic, pulling and pushing and when you call for it, it will come in boundless quantity.
Loving another is not betrayal of one, loving someone else in addition to a primary love spreads warmth, compassion and love. Receiving love from someone else makes us feel as good as they do, no harm. We’re taught to believe otherwise and this is where conflict rises, where people believe they have a monopoly on someone else; very capitalist. Sole possession. People as commodities; things.
The television soap opera template, of falling in love with someone, leaves no choice other than to marry them, according to tradition. According to the template, if you’re already in a relationship you have to destroy it – everything you’ve built with another, leaving collateral damage everywhere including in any offspring. With this behind you, pool assets and make another life. It can be made to work. But there are other ways less destructive, and this life isn’t for the entertainment and profit of others – a learning opportunity at best for everyone. Maybe as a lesson in writing your own life, next time around.
In an honest life within a solid relationship, love means not pretending that our feelings towards another are anything other than what they are. For our own integrity and moral certitude, we need to be who we are, or at least who we claim to be. Not a facsimile of anything society expects; not what a partner or anyone else expects us to be and not someone exploiting a vulnerability in someone else. Our partners can expect us to dash their hopes; support them in a crisis, be unpredictable, kind and thoughtful, love always and all ways, challenging, supportive, co-operative, versatile and an indivisible partner through shared life.
Contrary to when we are young, sex is not a primary motive for alliance when we’re past breeding age. As we age, the urge to procreate diminishes and sex becomes a pursuit of pleasures; an afternoon delight, a joyous exploration of each other. The taboo of sex is replaced with freedom from responsibility and consequence. In later life we have the freedom to explore differently; especially our bodies, the same vehicle we never heard our early peers praise for its exquisite sensualities, only the ownership conferred by marriage, commuted to the religious concept of guilt. Guilty pleasures.
Guilt, an illegitimate child of worry and belief.
Marriage is alleged to be the freedom to live together as two independent, autonomous souls. But in practice, the stronger of the two souls will seek to dominate the pairing, irresponsibly because it is dishonest with regard to the way two people say they feel towards each other.
For an abusive relationship to exist, there has to be love.
How would we know we were in a situation where we had no autonomy? Static. Without even the willpower to change any of the conditions in which we live? Does water have a mind to retain the image of its reflections, or fish swimming under them?
When we work hard, mowing lawns; felling a dead tree, moving huge logs or any other way of expending huge amounts of physical energy to accomplish a task, how aware are we of doing so? We’re there, necessarily, but so completely in the now of the moment there is no past and no future, only the moment we’re living in.
Sometimes, in the evening after sitting for a while, there is stiffness of limb, an ache of muscles reminding us of our recent exertions. Why did we not feel strained or stressed working in the now of the time? Were we there? Memory tells us the work was effortless but we only know this because of memory.
We have a tendency to judge every situation we find ourselves in, at the time regardless of the immediacy of the moment, diminishing spontaneity and taking ourselves out of the now. Afterwards, the judgement robs us of deeper meanings and lessons we could have learnt had we waited until the full experience was over. In the now, we judge positive or negative before we even start to do something, ‘Oh, I won’t like this.’ Or, ‘Oh, this is going to be good.’ We focus on these expectations derived from the pleasure centres in our brain to the exclusion of any life lessons in the experience. Life is more than pleasure and pain, but like the donkey, if we see too much stick, we live for our expectations.
Memory is a funny thing and mine has been hilarious recently, so forgive me if I tell you something you already know.
As we age, certainties we’ve held for most of our lives become fluid. Actions we used to do without thinking take a little effort. Not to the extent we have to pause to work out how to operate our spleen, liver or kidneys; our lungs fill and empty as usual although we do sometimes have to focus on controlling our bladder. This is the nature of our hardware, or wetware as it has been called.
Our brains are processors of visual, auditory and olfactory – all of the five senses, but separate and apart is gnosis. Wisdom, accumulated knowledge is the software our brain slowly absorbs as it works. But the brain deteriorates with the rest of the body as it ages, making our memories uncertain.
Our memories are not all stored in the brain.
A memory is only a processed ghost of an experience our brain needs as part of the software program.
The usefulness of memory wanes when we allow a single event to dominate our now. A bad memory of something we did, got wrong and were castigated for, prevents us repeating that experience in order to get it right. One bad memory bleeds into others becoming a mechanism controlling everything we might try; and don’t. Learning to be controlled for our own safety. Living in a fear we forget is there.
But as humans, we are adept at allowing multiple memories of failure dictate our course through life, steering us on a safer path. How safe do we want to be?
For most people, only when they reach the endgame will they not wait for anything to come to them anymore, nor should any of us deny ourselves something we really want to experience, which is everything we want.
Poetry, written by the likes of Max Ehrmann, reminds us in his Desiderata, of the transitory lives we lead. Everything he wrote in Desiderata has application in our lives and can be comforting, an anchor mooring us to reality.
We might wonder why we would need to ‘gracefully surrender the things of youth.’ What’s he talking about here? Good skin? Boundless energy? Enthusiasm? A lot of us have never been able to let go of our attachment to uncertainty, lack of confidence, self-doubt and the worry of what people are thinking of us – these we would willingly let go, and not gracefully.
But living our endgame is the time to gently let go of everything we’ve adopted from the lives and perceptions of others that have stopped us exploring ourselves, attitudes preventing experiences thought by others to be judged negative; dangerous, unethical, immoral. We want to live dangerously. We do so in different ways throughout life, but can now explore parts of ourselves denied an existence for a lifetime.
Because it’s coming to an end.
Alcohol has the capacity to numb self-control, those controls preventing us from being fully who we are; holding back half our personality, denying self-expression, joys, comforts and love, new experiences. All because we adopted whole or part of someone else’s life-code’s for fear of dire consequences. Careful use of alcohol can show us who we are concealing. We don’t have to worry ourselves in the endgame, we don’t have to fear. We have a wealth of first-hand knowledge of life and have enough faith in our own well-developed life-codes to explore our individuality while we can.
It is possible to love another, outside our normal everyday life relationship, but most people only want to trust one person, reducing the risk of betrayal and associated emotions by investing themselves in one person.
Personal experience of 53 years, 9 years into a strong relationship, led me to someone else I knew I could trust. She had entered life 21 years before me and, as our relationship developed, I realised although (resorting to cliches and metaphors) I had my cake and was enjoying eating it, I could have another cake and enjoy eating that too. The grass has never been greener where I am, and looking outside, there are other lawns, equally green, to play on.
Both relationships benefitted from each other. I learnt SO MUCH from the secondary, from a beautiful soul who taught me more about life, women and relationships than anyone else, strengthening the primary. The secondary relationship developed, growing prominent in ways I never would have thought possible, in depth, trust and ever stronger love. Neither one of us would leave our primary but we knew, we knew in the endgame we were both playing, we’d arranged to find each other to begin building the next life together.
Being aware, looking around and deciding to live the limited life prescribed by societal pressure is to succumb to a lower quality life. Saving, accepting the mundane, staving off quality now for quality later. Reinforced by dogma reminding us to suffer now so we don’t have to suffer in the afterlife. Not useful for a fully developed life; the constant promise of jam tomorrow as a means of taking, stealing from people everything they have today.
Do No Harm, goes beyond Hippocrates when we identify and interpret ourselves. Actions can result in love, happiness, well-being, knowledge, personal growth and self-respect, all of which spread, rippling out from us, the epicentre, without hurt to others. Why should such actions be denied?
Our brain memory in the endgame can become erratic, like a receding glacier leaving scattered boulders across the topography of our mind. If this is happening to you, you’re not alone. A lot of us have similar memory issues but don’t worry about it as much; choosing to surrendering the things of youth.
We can’t stop the slow decline, we have to simply adapt to the new conditions, living a new state of being in the now, without resorting to the past. We don’t actually need memories of the past to live in the endgame. Live for now. Our experiences are not stored anywhere in the body and when we move on, back to real life, the entirety of our accumulated life in this parallel is waiting for us; fresh and vibrant, to be examined, enjoyed and experienced again in real life, outside this parenthesis.
The idea that all our memories die with us comes from existentialism. And we are not existential.
Choose to live in the now. The present moment. Accepting everything, knowing our experiences will be as real again on the other side. It doesn’t matter that we can’t remember, it matters that we don’t stop accumulating positive experiences.
I’ve always planned my future, ever since I was woken at 7 years old. Seen with increasing clarity where I’d be, when and a lot of the time with whom.
In my endgame, foreshortening future was revealed spectacularly by the closest friend I’ve ever known when she told me from her hospice bed, ‘There is no future any more. Nothing to plan for.’
Seeing through her eyes, only the door; the open door. Her final endgame. Exit. A few hours before she left, she told me, ‘Love the living.’
We can prevent banality. Change life for the better in small individual ways at the personal level.
Here in the endgame, we’ve done our bit and can feel absolved of all responsibility to make the world a better place. Spending the rest of our lives in hedonistic pleasure zones of our own choosing, seeking like-minded souls to share with, finding each other, exploring those neglected parts for which there has never been time. All based on, ‘Do No Harm.’
Where does one start?
By finding out who other people are, friends and strangers. And moving forward from there.
