Now that I have officially become seventy, I am going to stop thinking about it. Or so I claim! One thing that occurred to me that made me feel all warm inside was that I have officially outlived my mother who died at 69. For some reason this feels momentous. She lived a life very different from mine and sadly never found the liberation in old age that I am now looking at. She never knew the phrase: "60 is the new 40 ... 70 is the new 50 ...." Just as well, I guess. She wouldn't have believed it anyway. She was a desperate and forever hungry soul, and I have had the memory of this living in my own body all my life... So, I had to go down the path differently, I knew this.
I have returned from a weeklong retreat of my very own making, as I hibernated at my beach house and worked on my memoir project for the entire period, every day sitting down and attending to it, and listening to the ocean at the same time, and laughing as my cats chased each other hither and yon when the wind started to howl. When I was outside and looking at the plants and hearing the Canadian geese fly overhead, I felt an immense gratitude for all the peace and the beauty, the likes of which I haven't felt in a long time. The timing was perfect, as this all followed a difficult week of confusion and self doubt, and a wish for a lot more love in my life. When I was sleeping in my bed at the beach and hearing the ocean roar in the black night, I felt comfort and love. How was this? Was it simply finding my place in the larger scheme of things? Belonging in my world for a change? I slept better and more deeply than I had in a long time. I kept my life simple, and I worked each day without much conversation with anyone. Very therapeutic. I was conversing with myself enough anyway!
Next week I will send my manuscript off to have it read and responded to by one of my young wise teachers. I look forward to the act of slipping it into a manila envelope and sending it off without a lot of fanfare, getting it out of my sight for a while. Letting it travel out there in the world feels hard. I want to see this as the very natural step that it is, like letting your own child fly away. Of course it's not easy, but it is necessary. It is what is required, after all, for things to move forward in the righteous and normal way. Someone said to me a while back, "remember your book is not you, it is just something you made..." OK ... BUT, I still feel it carries a lot of me as I imagine giving it flight. Even though it does carry much of who I am, it needs to continue somehow beyond me. That's the whole point. You don't write a book just for yourself - you write it for the world to read. And in order for that to happen, you must let it go.
Ah ... there seems to be a lot of ruminating about letting go in my mental universe these days! Must be significant. Let go of everything and you will avoid suffering, the Buddhist teacher said once. I doubt if I will ever get to that point in my life, but that's not going to stop me from trying.
One way of allowing this thing to fly more comfortably is to take my good mind and focus it on something it likes to do and something that might make me happy. There are any number of ideas here: start a new writing project, begin making jewelry with amazing beads again, get rid of 60% of my unnecessary "stuff" and feel that freedom, or return to JS Bach on the piano (I have been taking a little sabbatical from piano playing lately, thinking it was going to distract me needlessly from the writing project). And then there's my returning craving for another dog. That could take up a lot of my mental energy for sure! I have to look at this carefully, mind you, since it is likely that my wanting a dog has a lot to do with being lonely. And I also know that you can't really cure or fix loneliness. You need to weather it, and continue moving on in the present moment... It is like a lot of difficulties in our lives, which always become more painful as we butt our heads against them and try to fix them. These days I find myself staring at people walking the streets with sweet fluffy small dogs in tow, and I think, yes, this is what I want. Oh yeah? And then I remember the walking and the training and all the adjustments required in my very entrenched routine when another four legged enters my home. It is complicated. I had one remarkable dog in my life for 15 years, and she was my best friend... But as is true with all our human relationships, we are bound to lose the loving company of our four legged friends because nothing we love, crave, and long for, will endure forever. Many people will tell me I'm bonkers to take this on, have too complex a life ... my daughter's against it, and I'm sure my cats are too, but, hey, I AM the one in charge of this experience, right?
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