“Hell is identification with the outer self.”
Carolyn Myss
President Obama has invited a whole new conversation into our midst. That, along with the total breakdown of the way we as a culture have conducted ourselves, has very much been on my mind. I love some of the images he’s brought to the fore in another context but easily translated into a broader wisdom.
The word transparency has become a new buzzword. Well, as it so often happens, I woke up in the middle of the night with this full-blown thought. That is what’s happening to me - I am becoming more transparent! My skin has been one of the biggest challenges in the acceptance game I’m playing and as I‘ve watched it thin, crepe and sag, voila - transparency! My psychic life has become more “transparent” as well. Questions are bubbling to the surface like what is the “cost” to me of our cultural obsession with youth and beauty?
I’ve been reading the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of “The Tipping Point”. He says, “Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic, social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.”
As I explore the inner dimension and my feelings about aging, I must never lose sight of this outer force that informs my personal journey. These attitudes toward aging must be perceived and identified. Only then can I help to reshape the culture around a new set of values based on my own experience that values this third phase of life.
There are very few high profile women to look to for guidance in aging gracefully and numerous examples of desperate, pathetic attempts to retain youth. Suzanne Somers comes to mind. She is a girl/woman eternally stuck in the maiden archetype. She is exactly my age and each time they cut and pull her face skin back, her mouth gets wider and wider. Her face is looking, for lack of a better word, weird. Why is weird better than growing older? The only thing I can think of is old is very close to dead and we all know how unacceptable death is in our culture! I try not to judge women who are making this choice although I do struggle with it. Agreeing with the dominant paradigm is like volunteering to be its victim. I want to forge a new path.
So how do I include this inner elder woman waiting to greet me? She is no longer waiting in the wings to inhabit me. She is thinning my skin and pulling it toward the earth. I am being shape shifted by her and the question is how do I welcome her sometimes very annoying presence? I know I can't do it alone.
How do we as women midwife each other into this new way of being?
If you would like to read the comments of others or to add your comments, please click on the comment button in the footer. I look forward to the conversation.
