#on being

Ralph Gibson (American 1939- ) • Eyes in Rear View Mirror - Self Portrait 1962

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“Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through. Aye, there’s the rub. Many of us “helper” types are as much or more concerned with being seen as good helpers as we are with serving the soul-deep needs of the person who needs help. Witnessing and companioning take time and patience, which we often lack — especially when we’re in the presence of suffering so painful we can barely stand to be there, as if we were in danger of catching a contagious disease. We want to apply our “fix,” then cut and run, figuring we’ve done the best we can to “save” the other person.” — The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice | On Being

I don't feel noticeably different than I did at 31, excepting the myriad of daily aches and pains, and the ever-growing list of substances my body has decided it will neither digest nor metabolize - but the substance of me, the whateveritis that sits inside my skull and looks out through my eyes, feels very much the same as it always has. I like to think that seven years of therapy has eased some things, some difficult choices have made my affect freer, and that some choices I will be making will continue to aid me in becoming more open and more emotionally-healthy. But on the whole, I don't feel different. 41 doesn't feel like anything, really, and i suppose i had always assumed aging would feel like something. And that's the odd part: feeling the same, as the world changes around you.

Although, extrapolating outward from here, I imagine this is a feeling that will only get more odd in the coming years. I assume the high schoolers will seem even more like children, compared against the intervening generations who also appear so young by comparison, and more things will happen in the culture that I simply have neither the energy nor the force of will required to understand. And I will remain as I am in the midst of it all, and maybe that's what frightens us all so much about existing. It's this, the "oh my god this really is it, this is who I am, this is as good as it gets" and there isn't any kind of pinnacle at which you stop and Succeed Or Fail, just a ceaseless parade of days and joys and horrors and wonder and terror and sleep and illness and food and beverage and hunger and pooping and aches and friendships and art and other humans, until the day that the lights go out. And there isn't A Way that that Is, sometimes it's horrible and sometimes it's awesome and sometimes its boring and sometimes you long for boredom. And it is all of those things, all at the same time and in their turn.

We are. We survive the horror. We embrace the joy. Sometimes we do the opposite. And we live each moment one after another. And that's what it is. How it goes, is up to you at any given moment. And isn't that wonderful and frightening?