Inconveniently Awake

A Reflection for our Times

FIFTH WEEK OF OCTOBER, SPIRITUAL AGING

An excerpt of my forthcoming book Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life (Pub date: December 3, 2024.)

You have always featured yourself to be a seeker of meaning. This quest has defined your journey in search of a Truth that would help you make sense of things. But you have also thought of yourself as a truth-teller, and the older you become, the more reality grows to be nearly more than you can bear. At times, this feels like regression leaving you to ponder whether things have really become that much worse—politics, the environment, human nature—or is it that you have become less able to take refuge in illusion?

What is Spiritual Aging if not about becoming increasingly willing to be honest with yourself about what you had previously denied?  Inconveniently awake, one can no longer find the gift or lesson, let alone the meaning of life in environmental disaster, the bombs of war, humanitarian crises, or anything about many politicians and really of most anything in the news.  Rather than grow despondent or check out altogether, your only recourse is to ask the philosopher’s perennial question:  How, then, are we to live?

Ernest Becker, in his 1973 classic Denial of Death, offers insight that provides a path through the wilderness. Becker’s counsel is to face the truth leaving nothing out then mitigate your despair with something you can control.  In other words, a project.  Becker notes that by doing so, one’s life becomes “a duty of cosmic heroism.” Easier said than done, to be both a seeker of meaning and a truth-teller is not for the weak-hearted.

 How to make a start? Begin anywhere with anything. Is there something that interests you that you’d judged too insignificant or too hard?  Stop worrying about whether it’s really your true purpose, or whether it’s enough. Choose something and dig in with an open mind and heart. Prepare to be surprised as you discover that in doing so, you set forces in motion that will bring you fresh hope, insights and courage. Hold the reins of your project loose and let it flow.  Create your own meaning, one word, one stitch, one interesting or compelling thing at a time.

For the Spiritual Aging Calendar of Free and Support Group Events, click HERE

How to Join or Start a Spiritual Aging Study and Support Group, click HERE