Rosalie Cushman Considers: Growing Up Into My Self...
So, today is the first day of the last year in my 50’s. What a shock. I had dinner recently with a dear friend in her early 60’s and we talked about things that are wonderful about aging. While I won’t recapture all of that discussion, there are some things that come to mind about my life at this time.
First, while I have certainly had my struggles in several repetitive areas of life, it is astounding to me how many blessings I’ve had that remain to this day. I’ve learned so much about life and living from so many people and experiences. Occasionally, my life has been populated with meeting large numbers of famous people, with a far smaller number of family and intimate friends going a good distance with me on my life’s potent journey.
I’ve met or known a fair amount of writers from Steve Allen, to Dean Koontz, to Dr. Neal Barnard, to Jane Smiley. These are very big names indeed and there are many more, too numerous to mention. Remarkably, while moments of awe have nearly always initially mesmerized me when meeting these individuals, in short order I’ve been lucky often to see just how much of a human being lies underneath these worldly accomplishments. For a time I’ve had a dream to be ‘just like them’; to set the world on fire with some sort of creative piece, puffing out my chest with a ‘look at me’ kind of inflation that so many of them also suffer from. Yet that inflation often hides a tender and wounded heart.
Oddly – and I’ll lay claims to the fact that this has been denied me – I seem to not want their worldly prizes anymore, or not in the same way certainly. How on earth could this even be? Yet, there comes a time in a life when your perspective gets changed, when you no longer see your life or the living of it from the same perspective. One of the authors along the way I also met was the astronaut, Gene Cernan. He was the “last man on the moon” with a book by the same title. In his book, he has pictures of the earth he took while up there, tromping around on that reflective piece of rock.
I think of his book now, but mostly of his perspective: to reflect back on where you ‘come from’, from a life being lived, what it’s true worth is, what it means and, most importantly, what might be truly gleaned from its evolution around the sun’s revolutions. One time when I was whining to a very successful creative advertising friend about my lack of money and ‘worldly goods’ he just turned to me and said, “You have things money cannot buy”. And, while his words seemed so tepid and trite at the time, I sniffed out the truth of them even through my thinning anger.
I know a Pulitzer Prize does not account for how someone lives their life from the heart. I know walking on the moon does not do it either. These acts in and of themselves, while of course hugely noteworthy, do not reveal the deepest truth of a person. I have another friend who owns several casinos, has been wildly successful in business. His personal life has been very much a mixed bag, messy and painful at times, with pockets of love he flees uncontrollably from. Yet, I find myself still responding to some indescribable aspect of him that is visible in the glint of his eye, the impulse I see unbidden and nearly uncontained at times, to reach out to others. It is the same for all of us. He has his own things to ‘learn’ from his life and only he can discern what they might be.
Recently, I watched “The Social Network”, a story about the founder of Facebook. Now, I’m here to tell you, he has made enormous contributions to humankind. Globally! He’s a zillionaire, yes. I’ll give him all the respect due for this astonishing accomplishment. Has he satisfied his deepest yearnings of the heart? Only he can know that, yet it is all we are ever really here for anyway. He remains very young and will likely have much more time to unbury himself from the living grave he has made for himself. He invented Facebook – a tool to connect with others. Remarkably, he does not yet seem to know what the connection is for. To know another, to connect from the heart, to throw out the ‘world rules’ of definition of one’s self and elevate our true definition for us to act upon is what the living is for. It is for Loving. Facebook guy wanted the girl but for ego, not his heart. Jeesh. Raise your hand all of you who’ve ever gone down this road! He is so not alone, although extreme in his example. He is so ‘us’! I know of which I speak, I married (and mercifully, divorced) a trophy husband.
For the Buddha, the connection was enlightenment with the divine source of life. For Mother Theresa, it was living and giving compassion from the heart to any and all in need as they lay ‘dying’. For Nelson Mandela, unearthing his true being took 27 years in a jail cell, operating from love and forgiveness before he went on to liberate a nation. But years don’t count. They really don’t. Intentions and purpose do, however long it takes, however many lifetimes. These folks may be large examples but they reflect our own individual internal struggles.
Yes, while my ‘worldly goals’ may be recontextualizing themselves in unexpected fashion, my mantra pasted on the mirror remains with the same question: ‘what do I want to be accountable for on my deathbed?’ Today it strikes me principally, as the following: to know the Truth of myself and live from it, not as the world sees it, but as I know it to be. This includes identifying what happiness is, what lovingness is (as opposed to doingness), and what forgiveness is. What’s more, each of these qualities are necessarily undergoing scrutiny and re-definition at this time.
If I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow and exit the planet, I will have known my intention to try, to focus on these qualities are the only things worth accounting for. What’s more, my life has revealed the most enormous blessings, unfolding in front of my face with me all too often, scampering past them. Yet, in these later years, I reflect back on their enormity. Touching another, connecting on that indefinable level that some call ‘spirit’ (I’ll call it where we really ‘live’) has informed me to know, to remember the core of what life means in all its expressions. From the beggar in Calcutta, to the last man on the moon, I have been blessed with an ineffable gift of witnessing an essential connection, however intermittent and fleeting at times. It is everything and it is most certainly, the richest of all blessings.
I know the Truth of these experiences. They are painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in the notes of Mozart, and on the interior chamber of my heart. And for however long that heart continues to beat out its impulse to know ‘thyself’ and connect it with others, I will remain committed to what it holds most dear.
