HAS
AGE FACILITATED YOUR CREATIVE INSTINCTS AND THEREFORE CONTRIBUTED TO YOUR
WRITINGS OR HAS IT INTERFERED IN A SENSE, SLOWED YOU DOWN IN ANY WAY?
Since I am answering this question for a magazine for seniors, I
feel the need to preface it with some musing about age in general and how it
may or may not impact one’s functioning in the vocational field of one’s
choice. There are many advantages of being a ‘senior,’ and I am all for them. But
that is a different subject, requiring an entire essay or even a book.
I want to first address my concern that by labeling ourselves as
seniors and all its connotations, we are in many ways limiting ourselves. In
terms of linear time, by which we tend to categorize the stages of our lives, and
by our cultures of youth, we are aging, old, afflicted, feeble. In one sense,
of course, time and the changes it brings are very real and obvious. We see it
blaring all around and in us. The images are all too numerous but examples of
plants and people sprouting, blooming, fruiting, decaying, dying, suffice as
reminders when we tend to forget or deny the inevitable.
I had a long phase, after I retired at the age of 55 from my
comparatively brief career as an educator, in which I felt within myself the
ravages of time. I could not write for a long and tortuous stretch. How I
overcame it, the strategies I used, the perceptual changes I made are too long
to enumerate here. I have written a book The Writing Warrior, yet to be
published) of 32 essays on the subject: the processes of creativity, the
crooked, unexpected paths it takes, the essential lessons to be learned from
our adversities and suffering, and the techniques, tricks, and perceptual shifts
that helped me pull through. There is always the danger after ‘retiring’ of
falling into a pit of depression and futility. I have known people who have
died shortly after retirement. One must recognize the need to be relevant, to
matter, and then take steps, often minor ones, to perceive and ensure it.
Knowing from the examples of acquaintances and friends the psychologically
dangerous straits one can fall into, I am grateful to the Universe for bringing
me out of it whole and unimpaired. I have not only survived, but know, if I am
granted health and longevity, that my best work lies ahead of me.
I will be sixty-six soon. I do have days in which I strain for
words, can
barely catch the edges of thought, forget, then remember briefly something
almost urgent to do, some idea or insight to jot down, then forget right away
and no effort can bring it back. But I know on such
days to rest my brain. How I do this is another long topic. But with rest, it
invariably recovers.
Though time appears to be linear, bringing us to the
diminishment of our power and abilities, in another sense time is the least
real of all our realities. Simply look within your heart to see all time, all
memory existing simultaneously. This narrative is anything but linear. It is
a-chronological, outside the bounds of time and change as our minds know it.
The heart, where memories, hope and desires spring, knows nothing of time. Here
we are still children if we allow ourselves to be; here, from memories of
stories told, our parents and all the ancestors that have preceded us and
brought us here, to this now, are
children, still a possibility in that plasma of life which births and receives
everything; here, even in this dimension, old men in decrepit bodies fall in
love and shriveled old women still nurture the embers of youthful desire in
their hearts; here dreams and hopes never die and time ceases.
The story
of my writing is not disconnected from my faith that our primary endeavor on
this Journey we call our Life is to stay as close to the realities of the heart,
the space of Possibility, Miracle and Mystery. We have to keep our awe, our curiosity,
our passions alive as we age, nurture them till they grow ever larger. These
bestow vibrancy to our lives and keep us youthful. I am certain that if we keep
ourselves open to the Mystery, not fall into the trap of being this or that, old
or young, or think that our powers must inevitably grow less as we age, we can
be potent at whatever age we find ourselves.
Having said all of the
above, I can put myself in its context. I look at myself in the mirror and
though I know this creature with silver hair that looks back at me with often-puffy
eyes as ‘me,’ I can see how the contours of its face have changed over time, as
everything in nature changes. But internally, my life at this (what most people
consider) ‘late’ age, has, like a sudden summer on a dying tree, begun to bloom
in ways that have surprised and delighted me. I do not doubt that these
flowerings will happen unexpectedly, obeying the laws of some inner seasons, till
I die. Of course, one never knows about life, and this not knowing, if kept
alive in our memories and our daily discipline, can be a path to awe and vibrancy.
I feel in better shape than I ever
have in my life, both physically and mentally. The former is due to a passion
for movement, for exercise (which doesn’t at all mean that I don’t indulge occasionally
in glorious laziness; I do; I have earned it); yoga, stretching, walking, and
gentle weight lifting. These activities must be our constant and loyal
companions as we travel further into the part of this Journey we call Old Age.
If befriended with a certain degree of caution, awareness, they will never let
you down. Secondly, pertinent to the mental part, the brain, too, must be
exercised. We cannot let it atrophy. It is altogether too precious a thing. This
can be done in so many ways that it deserves another essay, or even a
book.
My way of exercising it is through
writing. My projects are puzzles that I have to put together. Freed from the
need to earn a living, I have more time and leisure for it. My subjects and
projects are branching out, proliferating, and I would need ten lifetimes to
complete them all. But I have written much, and hope to write more. Age has
brought me to subjects that I adore. They elicit my passion and engage my
curiosity. I am not aged but eng-aged. In the final analysis, I would have to
say, age has been a great Guide and Ally.
Of course it has brought me closer
to the Event Horizon beyond which I will cease to be visible. But that, always
the ground and bourn of this narrative, and the contrary, conflicted thoughts
and feelings it evokes, is another essay.
~
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