I have the gentle earthly face of a grandmother. I am becoming the wise crone. Decades of wear and wrinkles tell their own story; of adventures, disappointments, broken hearts, betrayals, joy, admiration, motherly lines, exoduses, and of course of failures, growth and the tides of spiritual renovations. Unspoken stories of fear, insecurity, selfishness, victory, love, impassioned pursuit, and those confident moments of selfless thought.
The experience of a life lived in the ignorance of youth that spans generations. As I say goodbye to the past. As I step into the current moment. As I allow the honest reflection that even in this day of acceptance I am still ignorant, unknowing, questioning, and uncertain. As I seek to follow the dreams of youth – was that such an ignorant time after all? Do we really get wiser, or just tell ourselves we are? Can I make something happen that I could not as a young woman? One thing I notice is that instinct doesn’t have the driving force it once had, or is this the instinct of the older years?
With all the information of the digital age, the addiction to the gathering of it, and the need to find the answers of the inquisition that will finally satisfy the internal judge. All the while finding only more questions than answers. With all the information out there at my fingertips, the aching desire of being human is not quelled. Some say the answer is in this pathway, or that religion, or a romantic encounter, or another practice, or in one of the many teachers who speak with authority as if they know for sure what my answers are. Yes, the seeking is as much an addiction as the gathering of insights.
I notice more than ever in my life the need to stay productive, creating, staying busy toward dream realization, allowing the undesirable…
Allowing the undesirable, settling, devolving into the thing I have resisted my whole youth. And how is this so much wiser?
In age the challenge intensifies – to keep from giving up and/or giving in. Of denying admittance to the voices of reason as they spill off the tongues of the imprisoned who struggle in their decades-old search for a purposeful interaction with life. At least that is my experience.
I haven’t walked the earth without fear, and how did I not succumb? By ignoring it, rejecting its power, stuffing it down into the shadows of my heart and soul? Fear prefers shadows where they thrive and grow strong until one day as the unheeded, ignored and rejected terror now takes on a physical presence in the body called the temple of the soul. Fear sometimes expresses itself as anger, rage, depression, dependencies, isolation, addiction, hypertension, physical pain and other diseases. These are worth an honest consideration. Which I must add can also be addictive.
So what is this wisdom of age that we expect, speak of, claim, demand, and of which we are obliged. Is it the stubbornness of holding onto our own personal ideas, the years of gathering evidence in their defense or prosecution? That as we claim experience, it must be our own perspective is one of truth, after all have I not conformed to my own idea of reality to grow ever wiser with each year? Have I not built walls unto myself to better understand a world that eludes my comprehension? Finally walling myself into a set way of thinking, acting, living, perceiving by barricading out the experience of fear, rejection, humiliation, insecurity, and uncertainty that life presents?
I have the gentle tired face of a grandmother. I am avowing the wise crone. Decades of wear and wrinkles tell their own story… Of internal travels to find the self that is not, no matter where I looked, how I sought to fix, what I changed, what shadows I fashioned. And at last being the self that loves all that is this mixed up, chaotic, indulgent, unknowing, denying, resisting, reflective, flawed creation that is me.
