on living long

Many moons ago, my brother posted this photo:

And so it does.  

I work at a hospital, on the orthopedic floor, which, as one would expect, gives me the frequent opportunity to work with the elderly.  

(Let me pause for a second and comment on how I hate that word, elderly.  It's a word that we use to respectfully categorize people who are old in age, but what we really mean, in very plain language, is that these people are very very very old. But when you work with enough old people, you find that someone in their 90s may have the same vitality and youthfulness as a person 20 or 50 years their less; mostly having to do with the state of their health. But, more on this later.)

Prior to working at the hospital, I was working as a Baker for three years.  Those three years weren't just years of baking bread and making butters; they were three years of being committed to shaping culture through the architecture of food in place, while also cultivating community.  That was the heart of the work then.  But I left. Because, as with most restaurant jobs, on the other side of meaningfulness, intention, and romanticism, there was also the nightly party. 

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with parties.  But if I'm honest, I was growing tired of beer and late nights that felt derivative of the actual intention (of my intention).  I felt extremely polarized; I would have very meaningful conversations with coworkers about the process of food and then life, and in the same night, have a very fleeting and hedonistic soiree, complete with bass dropping music and a hangover in the morning.  And again, there's nothing wrong with this. This is a good picture of life. Standing outside of it, there's a time for both of these things. They often happen in light of each other.  

But I couldn't keep up because it made me feel selfish most of the time.  So I left. And I set my hands to a different kind of work.

Now, I take care of old people. I work the night shift. I see pain, and the execrable mess that comes along with being old, of which, I mean the way an old person loses control of certain bodily functions. It's not rainbows, but literal shit. A lot of it. I also see recovery, yes. But, I also see death. And, or, the shadows of it. I see how near and tangible it feels though it isn't yet.

And the thing about old people is that they're old enough to know that they're at the end of their life, but young enough to keep wanting to live (at least those who are still in their right minds, and those who haven't had to withstand much pain or suffering). They know they are at the end of their life and the anxiety is real.  Not for everyone. But for a lot of them.  One night, I had a patient who would not allow me to leave her room, and if I did, she begged me to come right back. She said she didn't like being alone. She was an anxious ball of a human.  She gave me the sense that death, to her, was all the loneliness.

What happens after death is the question that confounds the wisest of men.  It's not an easy thought, but it's one experience we will all go through, and yet no one has been able to explain it (though, some would say Jesus, He did).  But on a very human and personal level.. it is an experience that is so very concrete, yet so very incomprehensible, because it's not so tactile to us. Where do we go? Is there even a going?

Those questions, whether I like it or not, won't be answered until... it happens.  Working with old people was feeling all their anxiety and all their unknowing.  The hospital has a way of giving people the space to say “last words” kind of sentiments.  I met a man who was in his 60s, and after an emergency amputation of his leg, while laying in his hospital bed, he told me that life just flies by. He said that once you turn 30, life just flies by and whatever you want in life, ya better go get it now, because it's your's if you want it. He said not to wait.  I met a woman who, in pain, told me to stay young. I asked her, "How do I stay young?"  Her answer was to smile and laugh often, that is how we stay young.  I talked to a man who was dying, and in our last conversation, I could tell from the tone of his voice, and in the look of his eyes, that all of him was sad and hurting. It broke my heart.

Life comes to an end. And it's short for everybody. Some, even shorter, but it's short nonetheless. This is the fucking truth.  But it's truth provokes me to hold onto gratitude and to practice presence.  I've been thinking about my perspective of this life, and how to live it even in such a fractured world. And  when I begin to zoom out of my own narrative, and look at how short this life is for everyone, I realize that time is relative.  Here's the science of it all: According to quantum physics, the reality is that we all carry our own clock, and it ticks at a rate that is hugely dependent on those features of motion and gravity (Brian Greene). So time isn't as linear as past, present, and future, as much as we think it is.  Every moment is an infinity of itself. It is always bending, going forwards and backwards, looping around, and away, twisting, and turning along the spectrum all the time.  

The bending and the relativity, it's a seed of hope. Yes, it's a tiny seed, of which my mind can hardly wrap around, but it's what I need. Because if I ground myself into that idea, it makes every moment so much more important. What imprint into this moment of time can I let reverberate forever? It lets me choose both wisely, and a little bit more freely. There's an urgency and an ease. Let us live forever. The sobering reality of the shortness of life, and the enlivening actuality of this time, right now, puts light on the fact that―oh my God, I have two healthy lungs, a beautiful heart, a working brain, and two fucking feet that allow me to move and live and breathe.  Wow... Wow. 

This is the prayer I want to live by. I think much of my living and doing has been a result of my fear of life passing by.  I grew up on annoying cliches like "Live with no regrets." But I think this is the fear that traps us. It is the fear that it will be gone, and then we are guilted by it somehow. But frankly, I'm tired of these sayings that are rooted in fear instead of boldness.  Let us live our forever.  Let us have our infinity. Let us live extravagantly and passionately in this moment, that we are here so vividly and clearly in the most non-dual way. Nothing less. So nothing and everything is wasted on this side of eternity. 

being alone

These days, I have been spending a good deal of my time alone.  If not alone completely, I am often alone in crowds or in rooms.  And a large part of me knows how sad that sounds.  But it isn't sad until being alone turns into a creeping loneliness that begins to hollow the heart and dim the eyes. And that? That is sad. I mean, did you know that loneliness contributes to disease and sickness?



Because I am finding myself alone, I have the time to think about how I am living this life. I think about how I want to spend my time, and how did people centuries ago spend their's.  And then my thinking makes turns, and I think about how I used to perceive life as my own frontier upon which I had the sole responsibility of marking it out on my own, for me and only me. 

So when I am alone, I am often confronted with my loneliness, which gives voice to all my longings. It can be easy to bring my hands to my ears. Lain Thomas, a modern poet, wrote, '"And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, "This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!" And each day, it's up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, "No. This is what's important."' There's a lot of noise in the daily grind, but Loneliness is a room that leads you to your most honest desires and disappointments.  And this is a room that shouldn't be ignored. So I do cry. And there is something about being your own honest friend, because honesty frees the soul to actually see, and feel, and gives way to actual listening.  I let myself feel my weakness, and let myself feel what it feels. Today, on my home from work, I thought back to earlier in the day when a coworker nonchalantly said, "I can't wait for you to have children." And it was a pang to my yearning heart. Yes. I want a home, and a family, so their voices fill each room. But I do not have that, and no prospect of it either. So I tear at the disappointment.

But then in that room called Loneliness, the sadness becomes a revelation.  I may be weak, only then to be strong, and brave, and to tell myself that you can do this, by yourself, and its going to be okay, and it's only one day, and this season will not always be.  And then I begun to think about my beautiful 93-year-old grandma, who has seen years gone by, who has watched her children's children's children grow up, who has traveled across oceans and continents, who has done some serious living, and I remember the look in her eyes, and I recall the certainty in her voice, and I can't help but but fall to my knees in deep gratitude over this woman. Its there that I begin to realize my life is not my own. It never should be.  I am reminded that life goes in any way, and I am thankful I am alive and hopeful.

It's funny how gratitude turns everything into enough. 

when we no longer know what to do

almost always, whenever i am going through the throes of life, i begin the task of letting words fall on me. not words to say or to write, but words to listen to.



so while a mr. paul holds his hand in the space between us, amid sink and stove, and says, “you know what happy is? happy is this little finger. happy is using my hands,” i take his words in like bread and butter. and when i saw the stretch of his pinky, i found a bit of happy in my own.



and at the burger joint on the corner of walnut and oakland, a lucky boy tells me about an old man, who after walking out of a restaurant, comes back and says he forgot his cane. lucky boy says, “well if you forgot your cane, you don’t need it.” you. don’t. need. it. the phrase echoed liberation. that is to say, freedom from the crutch. i recall the moment i heard his story, and knew this was somehow for me. it came as a moment of revelation over the strength of my own two feet. 

and then when in the dark of the plaza, from the lips of a perfect stranger, a series of poignant remarks fell over me. this man, who i now know as a fifty-something year old mr. michael, says, “The world, it belongs to you.”  the declaration in his voice told me how true it was for him, and how true he thought it was for me. he traced his life from age twenty-three and told me, "Be strong," and then added, "I don't know you, but I can tell you've got wisdom beyond your years." and whether i believe the veracity of his statement, it’s there, in those first words, where i am making sense of the world and all its possibilities.



i am a romantic. sometimes i feel that makes me naive. and other times i feel that makes me more brave.  i want happy to be found in the work of my hands. i want to feel ease in the distance between what i want and what i have. because what i want is most often not what i have... but hell, i have got to be more damn persistent in committing myself to what i want. Of the same token, i want a contentment for what i do have, because i realize what i have is still the gift and beauty i do not deserve. but to continue in the list of what i want... i want to find the intention of my being lived out in every essence, in mind, body, soul, work, and place.  i want an art and craft that marks my existence, a community of people to bear witness to and upon, and the liturgy of daily rhythms to pronounce a life that died well. i want to lead a romantic life. 

and i want it all to happen not in the shadow of a man, or a woman. not in the shadow of a family, nor in the shadow of society. because i find the shadow of all of these to be too small. if in any shadow, may it be in the shadow of God, because She is much bigger and much more gracious than the whole of humanity.

“It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” | Wendell Berry

It's happening again. That welling up inside that calls me to put pen to paper. Soon friends, expect a post on the things I am processing-- or rather the way in which I hope I am becoming.
 

the up and down and over

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. | F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby



The view from my bedroom window overlooks a city, and when I start on my routine bike ride down the mountain from my house, I can see the steepness of the pavement dropping beneath me. And then at the end of the day, I feel the breadth and heaves of the mountain as I take my bike up. Morning and night, I am confronted by my smallness.  It is good.

This is the way I have been starting and ending my days, with my smallness in mind. Though there are days when it feels painstakingly hard to pedal against the rise of the mountain, I can't help but feel much gratitude in the stop of this reality.


Being surrounded by a cityscape and living in a technology infested world, there is the assumption that all westerners are born into believing, and that is our own mightiness, and from our own flats we like to say this is mine. We attempt to mirror the night sky with electric lights strewn about the city streets and mimic the silhouette of the ever changing horizon; like the plunge of plateaus or the curve of hillsides, we exact its likeness by building skyscrapers to create our own skylines. We easily forget our frailty, but this halting mountain, saves me from this forgetfulness. And watching its ascent toward the heavens makes me human again. 



The movement of this thought peaked when, months ago, I sat down in class, and feeling overwhelmed by the list of things I needed to do, my professor began his lecture by giving a few words on similar sentiments (on forgetfulness, and our humanness). He talked about our thoughts, and shared openly the one thought he turns to so frequently, which now has become instinctual, and prayerful.  The thought came in a question, the way the Father of Lights asked it: Adam, where are you? The question feels the echoes of our genesis story as in the garden when Adam sinned, and ashamed, he hid. But it's less about the act of sinning, and more about the loss of something. The question breathes a sigh of longing, begging, where are you, you have lost what it is to be truly human.

I think part of what Adam lost was the awe of things more mighty and majestic than he. And it was at that thought, all my anxieties were diminished. I am small, but oh my God, those mountains? Those stars? This world? Do they feel the weight of my worries? I don't know, but I feel the gravity of their existence ground me back into the dust and dirt that I am.

Oh let my eyes be set on goodly things. To the Father of lights, Amen.