The Problem of Aging

Escaping the frame

I was struck by this thought yesterday, and rushed to put it in a box on this blog:

 Being old is not necessarily a problem.  

It wasn't actually that striking, more like interesting in a quiet way.  So I've been thinking about problems in general and aging in particular.

Aging, being old, is a fact, a condition created by a series of experiences, of changes.  Problems themselves do not exist in reality.  The word problem is abstract, a concept in my head tied up with a judgement that it is difficult and I don't like it.  These thoughts made me remember Joan Halifax's story about when Issan was dying, and she was crying at his bedside.  He said to her, "That isn't necessary, you know."  He was a Zen master (so is she), so I thought seriously about that.  Not necessary to be sorry your friend is dying?  How about yourself - does your death have to be a problem?  Is sickness necessarily a problem?  Is pain?

Using the word problem is a way of framing a large issue.  You could say the real problem is not aging, but that we resist its reality instead of  flowing with it.  It's like "difficult emotions" in that way.

Framing a couple of issues

It's funny how we welcome risk and surprise when we pay for it.  People go to theme parks, travel uncomfortably on planes and go more uncomfortably through airports, which have become fun houses, delays popping up like monsters in the corner.  We deliberately meet fear on roller coasters, we pay to be thrown around on those teacup rides. But when life throws us around, we hate it.

These thoughts must be growing out of my current interest in softening to difficult feelings (discussed a little in the previous post).  My own "difficult" feelings arise when I don't like what's happening.  Depression. Pain.  People who don't do what they said they would (had to throw in something trivial). 

I couldn't explain why, but this is making me visualize making a not-too complicated mandala.  Reds for desire.  Some black strokes for judgement.  Here and there beautiful greens, restful lavender......What would be at its center?  Maybe a nice peaceful white, or a blue sky with puffy high clouds passing over.  Maybe some glitter.  

Against Cheer

I like the following response to the old question, "Is the glass half empty or half full?"

To the engineer, the glass is overbuilt.

It's all in your frame of reference.

I am just messing around on a Sunday afternoon, enjoying this interview with Oliver Burkeman, the author of The Antidote, subtitled Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking.  Here it is on Amazon, where you can look through the Table of Contents and read an excerpt.  It strikes me as resting firmly on such Buddhist concepts as accepting uncertainty and being with the moment instead of trying to shape the moment or your mood or someone else's behavior to your liking.

As for the graphic, originally posted by Selin Jessa, it interprets beautifully for me:  the glass is full - just maybe not full of what you want to drink. That doesn't mean you have to strive to want what you have - just be with it, not resisting, as you dangle off the mountainside (a reference to an excerpt from chapter four of the book).

Here is a bit from the end of the interview, when Burkeman was asked what he took away from writing the book:

I think what I've really learned is to have a lot of different tools at my disposal for when I'm not [happy]. It's not that I sail through life in some completely serene state, but that the problems and the obstacles and the irritations can be dealt with more swiftly when you are not locked into this idea that you have to stamp them out; that you have to make yourself feel motivated, for example, before you can get on with things that need doing; that there's something terribly, terribly wrong with not feeling incredibly excited and cheerful every moment of the day.

So, hey, have a nice day, and don't cheer up.

The Community of the Wistfully Unwell

[Watch the lion cubs for a dose of oxytocin, the love chemical.]

Well, we're definitely not in church - just got up at 10:30.  Which means I took some necessary pills, cleaned last week's newspapers off the kitchen table, and am still on my first cup of coffee, in my robe.  I doubt that we're going to be up to meeting folks for lunch.

Slept a lot yesterday, too.  A night in the ER just takes it out of you at my age.  At least Tom got to go home at 1:00 and get maybe 7 hours of sleep.  But they woke me up every hour until 4:30 for some stupid thing, like my list of meds - which they should have gotten first thing.  I finally got in an observation room and was let to sleep at 4:30.  Interrupted by a very loud girl to take me to get the goddam ultrasound, which is why we were there - as in why is the left foot swollen?  I woke up at 9:00 with a tray beside me of cold coffee, cold white flour pancakes and cold wheat toast.  What are they thinking?  The ER is definitely worse than the regular hospital, and it is not built around your comfort and rest.

When you're young, you miss a night of sleep and you can recover in a day.  This is going slowly. 

Looking forward to Downton Abbey!  This makes my life almost worth living, this and friends, especially Laurie, who e-mails, comments, and plays Words with me.  She is often invalided by back pain herself.  How good it is that we poor invalids found each other and can share our dumb invalid lives online.  The community of the wistfully unwell. 

I am reading this book, I've mentioned it, How to Be Sick.  Toni Bernhard, the author is just permanently very sick following a strange virus, pretty much lives in bed.  Even after years of this she finds herself hoping to be able to attend something important, but flattened by fatigue.  I think that, like me, she hopes she might feel better some day. That's the killer. I am not impressed with glib talk about accepting uncertainty when it comes from someone who is healthy, can work, thinks they have decades ahead of them.  But when Toni talks about it, she knows what it's about.

As for my trip to the ER, the doppler ruled out obstruction by a blood clot or some other mass.  That is a start.  But it feels like a failure, somehow. 

Living with Uncertainty

Few things are black and white

from a revue of a new success book, Uncertainty, in the good blog, The Simple Dollar

The first step in this process is to figure out your “certainty anchors.” In other words, what things are you absolutely certain about? What experiences are ones that you can rely on? What things can you rely on, no matter what? Simply put, once you figure these things out, you can always rely on these things and experiences as examples of your own success. For example, I know I can succeed with paying down my debt, so this experience of success shows me I can handle other things that require willpower.

 Seems Uncertainty is not Buddhist-founded, but is an exploration of being willing to take creative steps without certainty.  The above is good practical advice, but I think it's valuable to bear in mind that, at the same time, nothing is certain.  Many many factors enter into every moment. We work with probabilities.

I sigh when I remember The Little Engine that Could, from my own youth and my daughter's.  Its vivid story is, Just keep saying "I think I can" until you reach "I know I can" and you will be able to climb the mountain that you are not constitutionally fit to climb.

I often think these days how nobody else knows what I need right now, taking that in the spiritual sense.  Maybe I don't know, but I do know myself more intimately than anyone else does.  I alone have had my experiences.  I do know I have a lifetime endowment of pushing, trying hard, forging ahead fearlessly.  I have a lifetime endowment of running through pain, as I posted while on that retreat.This was not useful on the retreat where it finally led to falling down and breaking my arm.  I was tired, deeply depressed and, it turned out, suffering from a bladder infection, diagnosed last Friday.  In retrospect, I would have been well-advised to go home when the weekend retreat ended on Sunday, and not stay for the week. 

But it is very easy to not want to be at a retreat, when it is scraping at your denials and pain.  I've seen someone leave on a whim.  (Though how do I know what his pain really was?)  It is not something I do lightly.  So, uncertainty.

Your certainty anchor?  Things will change.  You will die.  Every carbon life form will die, including the cats and people you dearly love.  You will lose your favorite earrings, your figure, your vital chi, and your best friend.  You will mess up all the time, though it usually doesn't much matter.  BUT - your life will be old and stale if you won't take a step until you (think you) know the outcome.  So, creative courage in the face of uncertainty - generally, I think, a good idea.  Don't expect too much.

What is your true condition?

Joplin Missouri

Maybe you didn't live in Joplin, and maybe you aren't right now in Kansas City wondering what to do as five tornadoes head toward you . . . maybe you weren't flooded out by the Mississippi or the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan . . .

Wherever you are, look around you at your stuff. It could all be gone tomorrow morning.  Or you could be gone, come to think of it.  Tom and I are fond of a passage from Rebel Buddha that consoled us when our beloved cat Sheba got sick and died within a few hours.

What will help you find your direction is to stop what you're doing and just look at your true condition in life.  When you do that, you either freak out or get your bearings pretty quickly.  And what is that true condition?  There are many types of suffering, but there's one that's worth contemplating above all others: nothing lasts.  Life is short, the clock never stops ticking, and the time of your death will be a surprise.

Sherlock the day before he died.