Life In The Afternoon

     

As transitions take place during our later years, a fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning occurs.
--Angeles Arrien, The Second Half of Life

Afternoon Transitions

A brain organoid

      
        Summer's almost gone and I'm writing at the beginning of the full moon in Pisces, when Neptune rules and hazy, foggy moments are abundant. So let's see what sense I can make of the images and themes of ambition and meaning that spoke to me this summer. First there's that little brain organoid. It was grown from autistic patient skin cells in a small Petri dish by scientists so they could study various and sundry brain functions. In a nutshell, what they found was a neuronal imbalance, too much of this, not enough of that. I expect in the future such methods of discovery for all kinds of disorders will become commonplace and we'll all know more and more about how our bodies work. But what I wonder is will we be able to use that knowledge? If we know more about how our brains work can we better our lives and the lives of others? There's actually a whole new burgeoning field of neurobiology and neurotherapy dealing with those ambitious questions. I expect our grandchildren will be the recipients and practitioners of such advanced learning.


 Ambitious Questions

Abstract painting of butterfly wing

             Do you 'spose they will find out things like whether an enhanced sense of the sacred or the beautiful comes with age? Will brain mapping be able to tie together spirit, mind and body? Could we stain brain sections to identify areas that represent the flowering of attitudes, thoughts and feelings? Such things as this, ephemeral and  intangible, would be interesting to see in a Petri dish. But I don't know if that will happen. Maybe these are really matters of the spirit and can't be measured by science at all. Maybe they rightly come to be known to us only after the quest for an authentic life at wisdom's edge. In the afternoon of life at 60, 70 or beyond, it's interesting to realize how very different are our perceptions and articulations about life. After  the folderol of the fifties, the strength of the sixties emerges and then we settle into the seventies. Point of view and perspective on life change. Luck and pluck will give us a sense of who we've been, who we are now and what we can reasonably expect from the rest of life. Still, there are of course, ambitious questions to resolve.


Elusive Meaning

A place somewhere in time and space

 
       For such questions we find ourselves dusting off our tool box of  'stuff we used to do, still do, want to do more of.' You know what I mean, that snazzy set of skills and talents we always fell back on to put order into chaos, find meaning in the unfathomable or even to celebrate the ineffable. Writing happens to be mine. I used to find it thrillingly meaningful to write about things out there... the DJIA, IPOs, REOs and the SEC. Ditto budding entrepreneurs, zany inventors and right livelihood. Then there came the frantic chaos of turning fifty when  the whole world as I knew it ended (I left my job as a business journalist) and I was staring at the prospect of starting all over from scratch. Now I write about things that have meaning in here, things that touch the heart, things I like and find beautiful and inspiring.  Rounding up and integrating the pieces of the life I'd learned with so I could get on with the life I would henceforth be living has been a big job. But after much back and forth and a few false starts, I'm learning to engage the conscious aging process. It's sometimes daunting, often thrilling, definitely perplexing, truly intriguing. I wonder who else is up for this quest. Who's up for this kind of stuff anyway? Who needs or wants to teeter on the brink of a back and forth state of mind looking back and forward at the same time, all the while hearing that waking up, being present to the moment and living in the power of now is really all that matters anyway.  Maybe you want this. If you do, maybe I have something to share with you.

What Matters Most

          I can tell you this: At some point there is an end to the struggle

Huichol yarn painting, Resurrection Bird

to become conscious and present. A shimmering lifeline appears when after due diligence and paying attention to the signs and symbols, a life theme is revealed, intense and richly rewarding in its juicy simplicity. This comes as the editing of the life commences, asking us to keep what matters most while letting go of that gorgeous, precious but now dead memory, that fabulous but irrelevant idea of who we are (or aren't), those cardboard boxes full of, godalmighty-I-can't-believe-I-saved-this, papers and letters from the ancient 1950s. It takes plenty of courage in the beginning to go there, asking yourself to muster enough trust in your  now seasoned self to stand back and whack away, letting go of cherished thoughts and beliefs and creations about who you thought you were, all that stuff you've accumulated along the way and expectations and aspirations for the years ahead. At wisdom's edge is where it all ends. And where it all begins. Our ambition now is transformed and resurrected. To give meaning to our lives and to give that life back to this precious world we inhabit.