Downward Slide - after 20 ???

     The 2018 book, “Boy Wonders: A memoir.” by Cathal Kelly is “about the good and the bad of those brief years (before our 20s) when we find purpose without end, obsession without limit and joy in the strangest of places.”
     It's very important & instructive to see to what extent we agree with the author Cathal Kelly. For him, the years after his 20s are "sad," because he stopped being in the moment, stopped living vibrantly, because awareness of his mortality prevents him from being blissfully distracted by senseless, compulsive, but completely engrossing activities. Now he's anxiously cramming stuff into his last few (60+?) remaining years before death.

     We live in a death-denying culture that glorifies child-like behavior as long as possible. HOWEVER, aging wisely INVOLVES living in the moment, and is filled with progressively deepening, conscious JOY that's rarely experienced in childhood. It is NORMAL, HEALTHY and ESSENTIAL for adults to "let go of childish things" AND fully accept the reality, inevitability & universality of death - only THEN can we live freely & fully. 
          "I was born
           when all I once feared
           I could love.”                          Rabia Basri


     Shelagh Rogers’ interviewed the author on Oct 1, 2018: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1331958851980
     SR “Cathal, you end your memoir when you’re in your early 20s - arguably the time you left childhood behind. What do you think shifts inside someone when they cross over that threshold and into adulthood?”

     CK “Heidegger has a concept called ‘a being toward death’ - that there’s a point when all of us fully realize that we will die. And then our focus shifts from living in the moment to trying to accomplish something before that happens. 
     At that point in my life … there was a realization that things would not surprise you in the same way again. That there comes a point when you have run out of completely new experiences. So that is to say you will do things again and there will be much pleasure taken from your life, but in large part, you are never going to have those personal revelations the first time you heard a certain band, when you saw a movie that changed you … You’re just not getting that at 30. And you’re certainly not getting it again at 50.
     And that’s a sad realization. In the final chapter is when I think I recognized in the moment that that was it. That may have been the last one. It happens in a farmer’s field in Western Europe, on a goofy little trip, still trying to figure things out, and I just realized this was the last one. From now on, there is going to be a sort of sameness to things. This is not a tragedy by any means. But it’s ‘triste’ (sad) you know - that sense of loss. And it’s something we don’t talk very much about in this culture.”

     It's VERY easy to become depressed & cynical with advancing age - even on hitting the big 30!!! May I humbly suggest learning ways of aging WISELY? We ALL have far better QUALITY of life to enjoy than we can imagine, even if we have only a few months to live!: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.com/2013/11/431-transformative-power-of-acceptance.html

AwakeningArtsAcademy.com

Leaning Into Reality - All of It

     Fear of change is universal. At some level we all realize that everything is constantly changing, quickly, unpredictably and essentially uncontrollably. That is truly terrifying!
     Constant change (anicca), including aging, sickness & death, is so frightening that most of us simply can't face it, and thus suppress the whole idea, distracting ourselves with anything & everything: shopping, multitasking, compulsive texting, overeating, substance abuse, gambling, sex, workaholism, cults, ... 
     There are innumerable dysfunctional support groups for the many who cannot face existential realities. Why dysfunctional? Because trying to avoid reality doesn't work & only makes it harder when life hits you between the eyes to wake you up.

     “I’ve had to learn to lean into all I don’t understand, accepting that I am changed by what I hear. In all, it’s been an exciting journey, one that’s made me more alive.”
      Mark Nepo. “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. Staying Close to What is Sacred.” Free Press, NY, 2012.

      Life "asks us to ('lean into') look at, listen to, develop curiosity towards, take responsibility for our own suffering. When we don’t, we blame others or external factors (project, externalize), and suffering becomes endless. Meditation is a way of really settling into the moment, and sustaining long, long stretches of awareness so we can know and understand ourselves, and see where delusions arise.”      Ajahn Viradhammo

Liminality

     "Anxious quiver of being" is Ezra Bayda's description of how he experiences an aspect of life.

     In the dark time of the year. 
     Between melting and freezing

     The soul's sap quivers.                             T.S. Eliot - Little Gidding (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')

      “Richard Rohr suggests that the only way out of a person's entrapment in 'normalcy, the way things are,' is to be drawn into sacred space, often called liminality, where he believes all genuine transformation occurs. Liminality, from the Latin word for threshold, is the state of being betwixt and between where the old world has been left behind but we have not yet arrived at what is to come.”

     Franks A, Meteyard J. Liminality: the transforming grace of in-between places. J Pastoral Care Counsel 2007; 61(3): 215-22.

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/liminality-insight-into-emptiness.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/02/comfortable.html

Photo: Michael Wood    http://miksang.com/