— from Rosie Kuhn —
Truth is, you are the culmination of all incarnations of life on Earth. You are the pinnacle of evolution of your ancestors. You are the highest evolution of all of your incarnations. What’s that like inside of you as you take that in?
For me, when I read this for the first time, I thought “Oh no! I’m Doomed! This can’t be the best possible me!” Then, I took a deep breath and began to sink into the goodness of this truth.
Science now reveals that each of us carry within our DNA the traumas of our ancestors. That’s why so many of us are triggered easily by even the thought of violence, rejection, or betrayal. Our circumstances today, for most of us in first world countries, have so little life-threatening implications, yet we live in fear of the potential horrors that have devastated our ancestors in the past. For thousands of children in orphanages, death occurred, and still occurs, because they were not held or nurtured. On their death certificates it says, “Failed to Thrive.” My experience is that many of us carry within us this experience of being left and minimally cared for, until the despair was too much. Without loving care, we give up, let go and die.
I think that death by aging happens more because of this experience of not being held. Isolation, feeling forgotten and insignificant, depletes one’s connection to what is around them. Losing hope and meaning, it’s easy to become despondent, and the point of living becomes irrelevant. And so, it’s easy to just disappear into the ethers.
Suicide rates have increased by more than 30 percent in the past 20 years. More men than women commit suicide, and interestingly, elderly people tend to be more successful in carrying out their attempts.
Much like orphanages for children, long-term care facilities, for some, become an environment where there is nothing to live for. Any environment where a person finds themselves in, that does not nourish the human spirit, will bring about depression and a failure to thrive. Research has shown, over and over again, that one’s inner environment is the one that truly matters.
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl shares the importance that hope and meaning played in the lives of many who survived the Holocaust. To many, to live is to suffer. To thrive, one needs to find meaning in the living and suffering.
A client of mine, Marta, is 47 years old. From the outside it looks as though she has everything going for her. On the inside, she is in despair, frustration that regardless of how good her life is she can’t find her way out of depression.
My session with Marta today exposed a really important element of her internal environment. She revealed that most of the time she lives in the world of “If I weren’t me my life would be great, and my children and husband would be happier with me.”
I know this place that Marta is speaking about – that belief that, if I were someone else, I wouldn’t have the problems I have, I wouldn’t suffer, and I’d be happier. Truth is, if Marta was someone else, if I were someone else, we may not be confronted with the challenges we are currently facing, but we would be confronted with other challenges. As we look around, we assume that we are the only one facing issues that are part and parcel to the fact that we exist. Existential elements of purpose, meaning, and “who am I” are part of the human-spirit equation.
Marta is failing to thrive because she believes that she should know how to do life as Marta. Regardless of age, so many of us neglect and reprimand our inner self that doesn’t know how to do life, when the absolute truth is, no one knows how to do life! No one! Each of us has to come to grips with this fact and inevitably get support from a source that can nourish and assist one into thriving. 12 Step Programs do that; spiritual practices do that; therapists, coaches and spiritual directors do that; and some books do that. And there is always the option to use substance, food and activities that allow us to ignore and avoid the issues that may be crippling us. We fail to thrive when we ignore the pain and anguish within. We fail to thrive when we beat ourselves up for not knowing how to do life – not knowing how to be in life. Again, no one knows instinctively how to do life. That would be like choosing to go through elementary school again after you’ve graduated from college.
Our inner self … doesn’t know how to do life, when the absolute truth is, no one knows how to do life!
If we are here to grow and expand our awareness of who we are and how we are so precious as spirit being in a human experience, then we have to accept that wishing you were someone else, or hating that you are you, only makes life worse.
I’m inspired by the various aspects of aging that arise. I realize more and more the importance of the internal environment — where our inner guru resides. To nourish the relationship with our inner guru — our own true self — we need to train ourselves to create meaning that fills our days with delight. The greater degree of truth and meaning that we have access to, the greater our capacity to experience joy in life, regardless of our circumstances and environment. This takes discipline to train ourselves to let go of our ancestral patterns and grow our capacity to know the beauty, love, and harmony that is here in the present moment. It takes training. Lots and lots of training!
As infants, we didn’t have the capacity to nourish ourselves or to create comfort for ourselves. As we age, we do have that capacity — we just have to nurture that capacity so that we experience fulfillment through the end of this incarnation. It is absolutely worth the effort!!!
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.
This is beautiful. Thank you.
I very much enjoyed this essay, your observations and advice. It’s worth reiterating that “we need to train ourselves to create meaning that fills our days with delight.” I would add that such training–to put it in perspective–is severely hampered by our cultural and social emphasis on left brain thinking and cognition when it is our right hemisphere that holds the key to peace, fulfillment, and transcendence. There are several important culprits behind this long-standing trend, in particular our education system, which primarily calls on and rewards left hemisphere function–a fixation with right and wrong being one of those attributes. A focus on specializations (S.T.E.M. subjects are the current left hemisphere specializations of choice), obsessive testing, and educational “utility” related to a focus on career-based education are just a few of the other attributes. The suppression and loss of liberal arts education—significant academic nourishment for a well-balanced cognition– is a casualty of this trend. Another cause is our industrial and post-modern age culture of mechanical sensibilities, deconstructionist interpretations of reality, a preoccupation with competition, power, and possessions, and an over-simplified and compartmentalized interpretation of complex, inter-related issues. Finally, left brain blindness means we lack insight into the problems these attributes cause. Our culture and our education system work together to create a positive feedback loop that emphasizes left hemisphere function. We’re living in a left hemisphere “hall of mirrors,” as neurologist Ian McGilchrist puts it. There’s lots of work to do to help us recover and live with a complete cycle of cognition involving both of our hemispheres. Without that capacity and a reliance on the perceptions of only one half of our brain, we will continue to find it difficult to resolve the principal challenges of our time or come to know and appreciate the purpose and meaning of our lives on Earth and our place in the cosmos. Many of your recommendations speak to the use and power of our right hemisphere and will help restore that mental/spiritual wholeness.
I think we also need to take into consideration the implications of collectively living in these times where greed seems to be the ruling order of the day. It’s so devastating. the environment is getting destroyed for profit, and we watch the earth getting hurt and violated and collectively we feel this and know this. I think we feel not just OUR ancestors’ traumas, but all the ancestors who were brutalized by colonization – and we still see and are subject to be oppressed by this today. We can’t really separate the personal from the collective history. This is karma come to roost – and we are here to hopefully learn from it.
Aging in a world where the earth and the feminine aspect are so disregarded, where the culture seems so lost and disconnected from the greater whole of ALL Life, is enough to make people weary enough to want to lay down and die – at least for me, it is.
Standing for the planet and the rights of Nature, and for and our little magical spot here (or wherever we are in the Universe), is worth it. The natural world gives us so much. The isolation of aging in this world, without connection to that natural world and our natural state, can be crippling and bring despair. It’s a big load to carry – but it also brings compassion for our shared predicament. Getting to know, and love, the natural world around us, and members of this remarkable community – they come in all ages – is a lifeline and keeps us from getting too far out in isolation.
“They died by suicide”
As someone who hopes to live with purpose and die with dignity this essay really resonated with me. I did notice one thing that surprised me. There is an effort underway to change the language around suicide. The New York Times and most major media outlets have adopted “death by suicide“ instead of committed suicide. The idea is that you commit adultery, you commit a crime but you die by suicide. Mental illness is an illness and it can be fatal.