Wisdom? Passing it along –
Dr. Karl Pillemer is looking for wisdom – yours, if you’re over age 60. Karl directs Cornell University’s Institute for Translational Research on Aging. On a page of the project's website, he’s inviting you to share what you’ve learned.
Seldom one to refuse an invitation to share my ideas – much less my wisdom! … I responded. The collection of words that fell through my fingers onto my keyboard reminded me of all the reasons I am grateful for my life and look forward to learning more in the coming years. It might not be what anyone would define as wisdom, but this is a collection of what I’ve learned so far.
What filled me with awe and served as an infallible door into the eternal when I was a child still centers, refreshes, and inspires me: being alone, silent, and observant in nature; looking at the roots of a tree and knowing that in the tangle of wood, moss and stone there well may be an elf taking a nap. It's in those times that I re-member myself as a natural creation, sister to trees and a messenger to the stars by the articulation of my pulse and nothing more complicated than that.
Anger won't make me disappear or explode. I may, however, become sick in mind, body and spirit, and in all the non-visible worlds I may inhabit to any and all degrees, if I allow my anger or my fear of my own or someone else's anger to dominate me and my perceptions.
I don't have to be the center of attention, or even to know what is at the center of attention at any given moment.
Letting someone else talk without the expectation of being allowed to say my own piece has merit.
Making a mistake is OK. Owning it is necessary.
Apologizing for a wrong-doing, even a small one and especially one that makes my stomach quake, creates instant healing and sometimes even elation because of the freedom that follows it.
Hiding from and acting contrary to those thoughts and feelings that I pretended weren't important because to have done so would have necessitated my ending an important, self-defining relationship has been the cause of longest, most sorrowful pain for myself and others.
When we're sailing down the river of denial, there is no port that comes into view. As soon as we let ourselves acknowledge present reality, we find ourselves off the boat and safely on land.
It's OK to stand up and talk even when you don't know everything there is to know about something. What you know may be exactly what someone else needs to hear.
We live in more than one dimension. Sometimes the decisions we make or the things that happen to us have their origins in a part of our lives invisible to us. It all has a place. We are a weave in and of more than one way of being and knowing.
Love is a communicable ease.
There is no time out; everything counts.
Being an innocent is the best way to approach everything and everyone.
Original sin is the adherence to the lie that we are separate from all that is.
The best that I can do may never be good enough for some people, and the people who love me, including myself, will know that I, if not my single acts, am fine the way I am, functioning as I do.
It is possible to love someone without feeling attached to them or to the possibility that you will always have access to them. This is another part of the same field in which we know that it is possible to love someone without feeling responsible for them, or taking credit or blame for what they do or say.
Watching someone else's anguish without taking pleasure in it or being able to make it go away is a valuable skill for the watcher, and it becomes a blessing when watching gives way to witnessing and validating that person's right to exist in whatever fashion they find themselves existing.
Go for the juiciest opportunity.
Take care of yourself first.
Say yes to life as often as possible.
If you want to be a successful communicator, take 100% of the responsibility for using language that your actual audience, as well as your intended audience, understands comfortably.
Find something to smile at every day.
When you find yourself being angry at someone or impatient with their process, keep silent and find what you are impatient or angry at in yourself, because that's where the problem is.
Forgive yourself and find a way to avoid doing what needed forgiveness again.
Recognize that the people who have been the hardest to deal with have mirrored exactly those qualities in yourself that were impeding your own healing into wholeness and blossoming. Thank them for being in your life.
Feeling comfortable in my own skin is more important than meeting anyone else's desire or expectation of or for me.
© Leiah Bowden 2006
