Babies are a beacon of joy and delight. They also cry a lot. Perhaps it’s because they sense what lies ahead: picnics, pets and library books, but also mean people, racism, climate change, old age, sickness and death. The full catastrophe, the entire crazy disaster.
After babyhood comes being a child. Some childhoods are happier than others. If you’re lucky, you will survive your early life without extensive damage to body or spirit. It is a time of growing into yourself. You decide which foods you like, which books, which games. Next, the teenage years, which are, in the main, tricky. This time of angst and wonder is followed by attempting to be an adult. You marry, or not. You make babies, or not. You make friends, make bread, make mistakes, turn fifty, lose your way and find it again. You learn to play the cards you’ve been dealt.
One day you wake up and realise you are old.
Some days you feel young: zesty, happy, energetic. Sometimes you feel ancient: tired, in pain, world-weary. You attend funerals, staring mortality in the face, your own and other people’s. You try to live the clichés: one day at a time, relax and enjoy, don’t worry, be happy. Sometimes all you can manage is getting through the day with as much dignity as possible.
We are always in relationship: with our body, our feelings, history, the earth, each other, the weather, our ancestors. There is no end to this list; there is nothing to which we are not in relation.
Thích Nhất Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, calls this ‘interbeing’.1 ‘If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either.’
Physics bears this out. All particles of matter are constantly shifting, each one affecting the others, in obvious ways and ways beyond our understanding. Relationships are not stable. They are a shifting energy flow, a puzzle that can never be solved. This is exciting, delicious and scary.
Sometimes it seems that the older we get, the less we are sure of. The mystery deepens. Certainties become less certain. We continue to wrestle with boundaries between self and other, with our need for approval, with our desires and aversions. What are we allowed to speak of, now that we are elders? Are sex, money and death suitable dinner conversation? Have we found a way of dressing which reflects us, neither dreary nor ridiculous? Are quinoa and spelt really superfoods, or are they just average grains with a high price tag and a clever marketing campaign? Do we really need the gym, pilates, physio, podiatry and aqua-aerobics? Maybe a daily walk, a dash of yoga and a dance around the living room will suffice? The ageing body continues to disappoint, as my friend Zoe says. No matter how hard we try, we can’t avoid gravity or destiny, given the failing nature of the body. It seems unwise to take care of the body so religiously but forget to take care of the mind, flooding it with huge amounts of input that don’t lead to tranquillity. For some, meditation is one more thing they can’t find time for. For others, it’s a force for good in a world going crazy. Peace and equanimity seem more valuable than expensive face products or a bigger TV screen. Each of us must choose to what degree we’re willing or able to keep up with the fierce pace of technology. How much phone is too much phone? Is Twitter a bonus or just another time-thief making life more complicated? Some are early adapters, others are Luddites, while the rest of us muddle on with an increasing sense of bewilderment.
Going wider, we are all in relationship with the earth. The planet is struggling. Every aspect of our environment is at peril: species, climate, ocean, air. In what way do we contribute to this? Is it possible to rest easy at night while demanding cheap goods, bargain clothing and budget flights to far-flung destinations? Those of us in the first world have some serious decisions and sacrifices to make, because elsewhere the majority lack not only food and water, but basic human rights. As global citizens we can no longer ignore this relationship. We must change our connection to our lives and resources, in order to heal our ailing ecosystem for those who come next.
And then there’s the simple matter of getting along with people, which is not always simple.
My own life is abundant with complex, marvellous relationships: with my granddaughter, with my son and his wife, my family of origin, former partners, friends, writing students, the motley crew who live in my retirement complex. Each of these connections offers joy, anxiety, comfort, solace, demands. They bring gifts I am not necessarily keen to receive: the suffering that ensues from tetchy exchanges, the angst of unreturned phone calls, times when someone else’s troubles feel self-indulgent or the complexities of self and other seem too much to bear. I try to meet hard moments with equanimity, but sometimes I just take the phone off the hook and hide. I’ve learnt, from my Zen teacher, that to ‘immediately do nothing’ is often the best response. Sometimes all that’s needed is to leave things alone.
There is no escape from the bump and grind of this life. We are born, we live, we die. All of us, headed for the boneyard. No-one exempt. This is the way things are. And in the midst of it, hell can be other people, as Jean-Paul Sartre pointed out. Or perhaps hell is ourselves. Our primary relationship is with our own hearts, bodies and minds, and this fertile, fluid inner territory abounds with contradictions. Many of us dance to a song we don’t always recognise or enjoy. Sometimes it’s difficult accepting oneself, let alone anyone else. When the shit hits the fan, can I behave towards other people in ways that reflect my beliefs? How do I deal with my shame and guilt when I stuff up? When shabbiness and shadow are revealed, the suffering can be immense.
As I have grown older, I understand more deeply that my relationship with the outer world waxes and wanes. Sometimes I feel deeply connected with other people, sometimes I don’t. This calls on me to trust the emergence of what needs to unfold. It also requires me to examine, in a clear light, the limits of what I bring to relationships as well as the limits of what I can expect. I’m judgemental, controlling, prone to impatience. I can be a hopeless listener, too keen to interrupt, to fix, to solve, or to add my troubles to the mix. I’m also loyal, trustworthy, generous and, at best, a whole lot of fun. I value my friendships, despite the fact that many of my friends are getting a bit forgetful and don’t always get back to me when I would like.
Surprisingly, I find myself with a new partner, a man of seventy. He’s a kind, gentle, decent man whose life has not been easy, surprised and delighted to be taking one final ride on the merry-go-round of love. We talk, late at night, sharing stories of our marriages, our children and grandchildren, our victories and tragedies. He looks for the similarities between us, which are many. I am more conscious of our differences, also many. Taking on a new intimate relationship later in life is both wonderful and perilous. There’s no biological or financial imperative involved, which removes certain pressures, but there are many challenges. Flexibility is important and brain plasticity has been proven, but how many new tricks are old dogs prepared to learn? With long roads of personal history behind us, it can be difficult to change one’s views and habits, yet constant adaptation is necessary if one is to forge a harmonious relationship. Some days I bow down in gratitude to this man. Other days I could pick him up by the ears and shake him. No doubt he feels the same.
At our age, the stakes seem higher. Our aim is to be lovers at the deepest level, or why bother? With time so precious, meaningless flings and loveless marriages are no longer viable options. Together we explore the tender space between us, carving out a new territory, our own form of relationship, somewhere between married and single. It is vulnerable territory, at times almost unbearable. At best, it offers the freedom of room to move, along with companionship, comfort, physical pleasure and intellectual stimulation. At worst, we find ourselves lost in treacherous places of misunderstanding. Sometimes we are two gracious adults, relating with wisdom and ease. At other times, broken children, thrashing around in our own damage, not understanding the depths of our own wounding, blind to the frailties of the other.
In a primary relationship, ups and downs are more obvious, but pleasure and pain are manifest in all relationships. Sometimes we get on well with other people, sometimes we do not. In the end we’re all just bozos on the bus, doing the best we can. As elders, we reconcile ourselves with our lives, nourishing the connections we have, whilst mourning relationships no longer available to us. It’s an inescapable truth that grief is the price we pay for love. No matter how hard we try to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic, one day we will bury the ones we love, or they will bury us, except in the unlikely eventuality that we all go down together. The whole shebang has been on fire since the word go, as Annie Dillard reminds us, and it is no wonder that we feel screwed up a lot of the time and need to watch junk TV and eat yoghurt vacantly in front of the refrigerator, spilling the odd blob on the floor.2
In my thirties, I wrote the following:
Sometimes I think I am so tired because I am a woman in a time and a place where no-one knows who they are any more, that I am utterly worn out from thrashing around amongst so many discourses that all my strength is gone. For I am many, multiple, fractured. I am fat lady / thin lady / mother / lover / lone ranger / student / suburban housewife / consumer / ecologist / radical / conformist / hippie / yuppie / feminist / wife / shygirl / loudmouth / hedonist – and that is just a few of me, and I am tired.3
Thirty years later, still tired, I am all those things, and more. Grandmother, elder, Zen student, artist, sister, aunt, cook, friend, wise woman, fool. Human being in relationship with self and other: sky, tree, planet, child, ocean, teapot, moon and star.
So, what have I learnt along the way? As much as possible, to stop buying things. To live the simple life I proclaim, with a spirit of contentment, thus aligning my behaviours with my deepest values. To enjoy my life of divine ordinariness. To treat those I meet kindly, because we are all struggling, although some disguise it better than others. I have learnt that to be human is to be always in a state of flux, and that if I can live as change, as grace, my heart will be happier, despite global warming, shark attacks, terrorism and child poverty, despite my bung knee and my tendency towards melancholy. I aim to act for the wider good, while realising that my jurisdiction is limited. I try to be harmonious with my friends, even and especially when it proves difficult. I’ve realised it’s not too late to have a happy childhood because, despite my own ragged past, I now get to play runaway horses and magic castles with my granddaughter. There’s not much percentage in looking back, regretting old loves, nursing ancient hurts. Wiser to leave the past alone. Again and again, I farewell everything, including my ideas about myself. Staying current, inhabiting this moment, each moment, as the one and only real thing. Laying full claim to it, this precious, difficult, dizzying existence.
Notes
Thanks to Zoe Thurner for her great line.
1 Thích Nhất Hanh, Awakening of the Heart: Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries. Berkeley:Parallax Press, 2012.
2 Annie Dillard, ‘On Foot in Virginia’s Roanoake Valley’, The Abundance. London: Canongate Books, 2016.
3 Brigid Lowry, ‘Fat Lady’, Summer Shorts 2. Fremantle: Fremantle Press, 1994.