Born in the Snowy Season

A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Namibia. With her, she brought a story that has made me consider my relationship with age, aging and linear time. There have been other events and insights in my life recently that have also made me question our cultural attachment to age markers. It's possible I'm just in denial, which might be true, but even so, I think my dubious regard for the importance of chronological age may have merit.

It's my birthday tomorrow, my 49th (I know, right?!), and my proximity to a major decade has been looming in the not so distant future. I have never really known what to make of age, my own or that of others, because in so many ways it seems to wear differently on different people. But I have felt the pressures of 'aging' - not so much in my body, but in the expectations of myself and others. On a recent retreat it was pointed out to me that it is at this stage of life that we are somewhat forced to consider that this one life we get is at least half over. We begin to feel our own mortality in a more poignant way. This year I have come face to face with a raft of existential angsts - the pain and fear of feeling or being alone, a deep sense of shame nested in and made of my own emotional fragility. But of late I have also discovered a strengthening faith in my ability to survive my own humanity. Not so much transcendence as much as living into it, albeit messily at times, and finding a path through it - training myself to trust in something much much bigger than me. It's not that 'all will be well', because that is not how life is, but it's possible there is a way - a path of deepening wisdom and compassion, accessed through a practice of accepting (and even wanting) what is. Not to deny or suppress the things that plague me, but to see them for what they are made of - the insubstantial creations of my own grey matter. And to discover the excitement that lies beyond the fear, the thrill of not knowing what next - because as I once read, the universe has a much better imagination than I do.

It is snowing tonight in Victoria, which it does rarely. I have found this time of year hard at times over the last decade - for whatever reason as luck or design would have it, there have been some challenging events which have centred around the Christmas season. There have also been great joys (and sometimes a combination of the two), but there is something about the mind that tends towards association - the pairing of hard memories with a particular date or time of year.

I was reminded of two things this week. One: the true 'turn' of the year happens before Christmas and 'New Years' Day on the Solstice, the day that our northern hemispheric days begin to lengthen towards summer. That Aleutian Low starts to feel the faint breath of the California High in the few more minutes a day of sun from now on. This marks a cyclical pattern, rather than a finite beginning or ending.

The other thing is that there are indigenous cultures that don't celebrate or conceive of birthdays the way that ours does. When my friend Nicola asked her Namibian bushman friend when he was born, his answer was 'in the rainy season'. No date, no year. Perhaps his is an entire community that lives without the knowledge of their chronological age. It's a bit of a radical idea for us North Americans of European (and other) descent. So I started wondering this week, what if tomorrow is not that big of deal after all. I was born in the snowy season, and maybe that is right now.

Settling

This afternoon I found a question bubbling up in myself - what does it mean to 'settle', and what will happen to me if I do? I have been percolating this question for most of my adult (and maybe some of my younger) life. I have always been somewhat fierce about not settling. I have stayed in a field of work that has allowed me to feel free, empowered, viscerally alive for a long time. At times I have shifted into different and slightly less 'wild' iterations within this, but the work of personal development and wilderness has been the fire in my belly. These days I have made a choice to 'settle in' for a while, I've taken on a job that feels considerably less connected to wildness, although it has other qualities that are close to the heart of who I am. It also allows me time, space (energetic, emotional and mental), and a sense of routine and consistency that has had the effect of loosening up physical and artistic creativity.

These are things that tend to lose steam when my life is more transient and less predictable. I can plan ahead now but I also have the time to do things that make me come alive. Someone recently called it "safety", but it is different than that. The only kind of safety I desire is trust, mainly self trust (which is where it starts and ends) and that is an inside job. The financial security that the job gives me is nice, but the part of that I care most about that aspect of it is the amount of energy it frees. It feels as if my body and spirit has been allowed to drop a whole load of worries and uncertainties off at the door. And I have a generous amount of time in the days, weeks and months of my current life to find the wild places, both near and far.

I have also been on a journey - internal for the most part, with some deeply uncomfortable and painful forays into the external :-) - asking myself this same question about settling in relationships. What is "enough'? (or even what is acceptable)? When is it the right thing to simply commit to something - to find the beautiful simplicity of choosing to accept the imperfections of another human being, and more importantly my own failings and imperfections. I have wondered whether my own brand of non-settling idealism had led me astray.

On the advice of a spiritual teacher I asked my body (and Google) to weigh in on this topic. OK, he didn't suggest Google, but my body has not had time yet to give me a considered answer, so Google was a good enough place to start today. Though I am not in the habit of using the internet as an oracle, I did immediately find this worthy article: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jan/05/oliver-burkeman-settling

"...virtually all human activity requires some stability, some fixed points, some closed-off options."

I think my body is going to be in agreement, but
I will wait and see. I suspect that, despite everything (age, outward appearances of 'success' or 'failure' or other culturally imposed measures) I need to trust the intuitive wisdom that has led me to this moment, and this current state of affairs in all aspects of my life. I need to remember that the universe is more generous and forgiving than I am.

I will settle when I need a 'fixed point' around which to orbit. And sometimes I will not settle  when the fibres of my being are telling me not to, even when that may be painful. I also don't need to linger any longer in the confusing and gratuitous brand of retro-active sef-doubt that I have been living.

As I approach the Solstice, this is what I will carry into the new year. The sun is beginning to turn us towards the lightness of longer days, and I will be reminded to trust myself. To believe in the convergence of my past and future selves upon this present moment. To touch down upon the seemingly incomplete moments, in all their detail, minutia and beauty. So as not miss the blackening curve of the Cottonwood leaf as it gives itself up to the wintery ground, because I was too busy remembering the way it glowed translucent in the light of the summer sun.