I have only a little time this evening, set aside for writing, but without any strong motivation regarding a topic. There are four or five essays I’ve started at various points in the past few months – none of them grab me just now, asking to be completed and posted. Too abstractly intellectual; too much social commentary when I don’t feel particularly engaged; too removed from my current state of being… Too, too, too.
The only immediate concern that engages me in this moment of relaxation, is how to keep my present calm acceptance and contentment going when I am bombarded by Saturn’s powerful strictures, or the draining needs of others. I’m sure you’ve encountered people whose sense of deprivation, or overwhelming pain, or just plain exhaustion have turned them into emotional black holes, sucking life force from everything around them. I’m not referring to those who have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder – the ultimate in black-hole-ness. Working effectively with these fragmented people requires professional training and a great deal of practice.
No, I’m referring to people who mostly manage to make their way in life, but lean extensively on anyone and everyone around them in order to function. They hold jobs, they raise families, and they suck up the energy, the enthusiasm, the very vitality of those around them. I’d forgotten how many such souls draw on our health care system for portions of their support. I’d forgotten to what an extent I have to develop mechanisms to balance myself out, after spending days working with these needy individuals.
Some of the exercises in my weekly Ba Gua class draw energy from the earth and bring it up through the body and out the fingertips. After a particularly challenging work day recently, I rooted myself in the standing tree pose until I felt a resurgence of chi in my body. The technique is effective, but not one I can practice easily in the car, traveling between clients.
Checking in with my Master helps, always.
So does the company of friends, though I feel cautious about relying on the energy of others, not wanting to become, myself, the sort of leech that I am seeking to recover from.
At Upaya, a Buddhist retreat center in Santa Fe, there will soon be a workshop on compassionate caring, subtitled how to be engaged without being entrapped. It sounds like an answer to the challenge of my present situation. I will have to absorb the lessons by osmosis, however – I can’t take that much time off from work just yet.
Nor do I think such a workshop will guide me in dealing with the most serious source of leeching energy – the brutally frustrating, inefficient, too often non-functional data software system with which I must interact on a daily basis at work. I’ve learned that my employer is threatening the computer system contractor with a breach of contract lawsuit – and cancellation of the contract for failure to perform. One part of me is cheering wildly at the thought of becoming free of the monster. Another, though, cringes at the idea of having to redo – in a new data base – all the work already completed since the first of the year.
You’ll get some idea of how awful the data system is, if I say that keeping paper records and duplicating multiple entries by hand would be far more efficient and user friendly than the program we are expected to negotiate, when it works – if it works. I had set today aside for data entry – and couldn’t even get into the system until almost 1PM, effectively losing half my work day. To keep up and not feel totally overwhelmed by unmet obligations, I’ll have to work on Saturday – again.
I can work on Saturday. I’m free to work on Saturday. I have paid work to do on Saturday. I have a good paying, mostly enjoyable job being of service to others, after many long months of being turned down for every sort of work I sought.
No, I’m not practicing affirmations, just reversing a possible spiral into negativity that could begin with today’s frustrating failure, yet again, of a system that is supposed to be an asset in my work my life.
Giving attention to that which uplifts, enjoying the company of friends, sharing a bit of my daily life with these words – these are activities which allow me to regain energy, to move forward into my next day of interaction with whatever sentient or mechanistic black holes cross my path. Outstanding astrologer, Eric Francis of PlanetWaves, urges that we face the coming months of a unique and powerful astrological grand square by daring to trust. For me, that translates to moving forward with confidence that my inner sun is strong enough (provided I remember my Source) to keep shining despite any loss of energy or sapped strength.
To have the opportunity to experience this constant regeneration is a gift for which I am most grateful.
1eclecticwriter 
Is it Part of Getting Older?
July 28, 2024Is it part of getting older (old? Golden Ager?) that I am increasingly impatient with so many things? Bad – i.e. nonexistent – customer service. Unexplained, endless delays in receiving what has been promised, bought, and paid for. Packaging that is not only child proof but impervious even to sharp scissors. “New and improved” whatever that is perhaps new, but is the exact opposite of improved. Artificially created obsolescence forcing purchase of new equipment when the perfectly good items can’t be updated any longer because the tech company wants yet more excessive profit. I could go on, but it is undoubtedly a waste of time to do so.
And that most likely is the underlying reason for my impatience – a sense of time running out, that I don’t want wasted on stupidly aggravating nonsense.
My group of friends who get together weekly for what we call Stitching (to encompass sewing, knitting, crochet and whatever else anyone chooses, including idle hands) are all “mature” women. We all express frustration with time wasters though none of us have, so far, identified what I am considering now, that the very fact of being older and aware that the time remaining in our lives is far less than that already spent, causes much of the impatience. If I have only a limited amount of time left in life I don’t want to waste it on trash.
Perhaps I have also identified the source of the stereotype of old people as grumpy?
Yes, it’s true none of us knows, at any age, how long we have yet to live. But short of a terminal diagnosis, or existence in a war zone that makes one’s end of life salient, not many of us abandon the unconscious conviction of near immortality that is the framework of daily life. Reaching retirement, at whatever age above midlife that turning point occurs, tends to trigger an assessment of achievements and a setting of new goals, but does not automatically shift us (or at least it did not do so for me) into a more conscious sense of time as a precious commodity not to be squandered. It was not until, just recently, I noticed the extent to which I had become impatient that, seeking reasons, I came to understand this as a common quality of older folks arising from an underlying awareness that one’s days (hours, minutes?) are indeed numbered.
I think a somewhat similar shift in perspective occurs in what has been termed midlife crisis, the not uncommon mental turmoil that accompanies the first indications of flagging energy and rising uncertainty as to where one is on life’s path. Changing careers, altering goals, returning to school, finding new interests to fill an “emptied nest” are activities frequently accompanied by an awareness of time’s passage, bringing also an increased sense of vulnerability.
What differentiates this midlife reassessment from the late-in-life one seems to me to be a changed sense of time. In midlife, we focus on how much we still want to achieve in the (perceived as still long) amount of time we believe is left to us. By later age, we instead are aware that we have outlived many of our peers. The unknown amount of time left to us becomes precious, not to be squandered. People, circumstances, attitudes that waste time become highly expendable, and highly aggravating when they cannot be circumvented.
In order not to throw away my remaining time being angry or feeling helpless, I have sought a viewpoint to free me from this constraint, and found it in the concept of eliminating my remaining karmic debt, thus becoming able to exit this life (however soon that exit occurs) without ties that force me to return for another incarnation. One need not accept the concept of reincarnation to benefit from this form of detachment. The act of unhooking from frustration, putting down the impenetrable package, temporarily setting aside the uncooperative software – the fact of distancing oneself in order to come back to the task in a calmer state seems to allow it to flow more smoothly.
Perhaps I am merely recognizing an application of the refrain “to every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven?”
If so, is it time – finally – for me to be able to get the icing out of its impervious package so I can finish the cake I want to take to Stitching?
Tags:detachment, getting older, self-acceptance, spiritual development
Posted in aging, life wisdom, Living and Learning, Social Commentary | 1 Comment »