Aging Like a Guru | Allow play, just for the fun of it

— from Rosie Kuhn —

The thing is, the longer you stay on the planet the greater the possibility for you to experience fun stuff that grows you in ways you cannot anticipate. And, most importantly, you will be glad you stuck around long enough to have those experiences.

Last August, I facilitated a retreat here on Orcas Island with my friend Margaret Lindsey – a Master at empowering people to engage in Conscious Creativity. Her specialization and mine meld beautifully in creating a space for participants to be present to themselves in ways they cannot anticipate. This retreat — Loving Yourself into Creation — gave participants opportunities to play, play, play with paint, words, talk, and to listen to themselves. It allowed each person to come to choose to participate in their lives when they didn’t even know they had a choice.

A retreat such as Loving Yourself into Creation was kind of a mini course in Life 101.

As children, we play and we learn through playing. It requires imagination, creation, problem solving, disappointment, frustration, sadness, and we either learn to hang in there for the juicy good stuff, or we develop an attitude of ‘not good enough’ and failure. 

If we are lucky enough, we have people in our lives who listen when we talk about our thoughts, our feelings, our wants and our needs. They help us to make sense of our experiences and the interpretations we make about those experiences. They help us see that maybe what we’ve been playing at, or who we’ve been playing with, just isn’t right for us. They encourage us to find our real true desires — what’s really fun for us, and go for it, no matter what.

Play is hard work and is so important to all of us regardless of whether we are young or old. In fact, the participants in the retreat in August were all in their 70s. Each in their own way discovered that how they’ve been playing in their lives hadn’t yet allowed them to live the juiciness of life. Through their time in retreat, they became conscious of how they were limiting the possibility for greater fulfillment and delight. How awesome is that!

For me, even though I facilitated this retreat, I became aware of the interpretations I have about what happens as I age. I recognized the belief I held – unbeknownst to me — that ‘people get depressed as they age. I believed that, as life changes and people aren’t who they thought they were decades ago, that their lives become full of sorrow and hopelessness. Slowly they decline into decrepitude.’ This isn’t a truth, it’s just an interpretation of what I observed, given my conditioning.

I’m learning so much about aging, as I immerse myself in the presence of aging people. I get to see how wrong I am about so many things, and I’m so very glad about that!

In play, as in life, we are always making adjustments to the story, in the hows and the whens of the unfolding imaginations that are occurring. Many of my imaginations about aging are still stuck in that old paradigm: “Life sucks and then you die.” As I continually play with people who are playing the game of being old, I get to see that each of us get to make it up — we make believe. This is a very powerful ability every individual has within themselves to make believe.

I’m more aware than ever before that we can have all the fun we are willing to have — up to and through our transitions to what’s next! Play and fun is hard work for us grownups, as hard as it was when we were children.

A retreat is just a playground for grownups. Even as a facilitator I get to play, imagine, and grow, joyously following where my heart desires to go. This is the way I believe all life should be for all of us guru-children: playful learning — led by our hearts and witnessed and embraced by loving beings.

The point of this sharing is not to sell you on a retreat, but to perhaps encourage you to discover ways to create a “retreat” for you, where you can play hard at what you love to do, and be present to all the various yous who show up with you on your retreat. Allow play!

PS: If a retreat is something you are looking for, this upcoming July Margaret and I will facilitate another fun and playful retreat here on Orcas: 2nd ANNUAL WONDERFUL WOMEN’S CREATIVITY RETREAT: Art from the Heart: July 22-26.  For more information, contact me at rosie@theparadigmshifts.com, or visit Margaret’s website www.artransforms.com 

For more blogs, books, videos, or if you are interested in coaching or training with Dr. Rosie, check out her website: www.theparadigmshifts.com. And her podcast can be found at aginglikeaguru.podbean.com. The book Aging Like a Guru – Who Me? and Dr. Rosie’s other books are available at Darvill’s Bookstore, the Cottage Gift Shop, and Amazon.