Day 16 - Meltdowns & Buildups

 We all have had meltdowns during this pandemic - luckily in this house, not all at the same time!

I'm surprised there haven't been more meltdowns. Each day is pretty much the same - ticking off the passage of time with no apparent change, although I keep saying that one day we'll look back and realize what we've learned through this, it doesn't actually help in the moment.

It's easy for us adults to chime in with our words of wisdom, trying to help quell young worries of missing rites of passage, missing friends, missing out on life, but as my eldest said "Mom, you've already lived your life, we haven't even started!"

She's right. Yet, as both my parents have said "I still feel like I'm in my 20s, the only difference is that I'm old." And there's the rub. Our minds are always curious, always learning and wanting to learn more - it doesn't end. In my own evaluation and ideas about life, I consider death to be another rite of passage into another realm of growth, no matter if it's no longer attached to matter. Perhaps that's just me, but it's the one thing that maintains my curiosity and openness, which is a kind of living salvation keeping my chin up.

As we inch further away from childhood and closer to elderhood, we are in a limbo that needs just as much care and attention as our children and aging parents do. The difference is that during these years, it is solely up to our own personal strengths and understandings to guide us - we can look to each other for support and camaraderie, but there is no grandparent, no guru, no guidebook or 12-step program for us to follow. We're like children without parents, sailboats with no wind, having to navigate our lives and the ever-changing world with the knowledge that not one of us has the real deal mapped out. We look to others who seem to know what they're doing and figure that we've lost something along the way - what do they know that I don't? 

During play, children are able to make things up as they go along and have a wondrous time doing it. They don't care if it doesn't make sense. That's a lesson for us 'old children'. We grew up and got busy trying to look like we know what we're doing, and telling others how things should be done - we started believing what we said, and disbelieving what others said if it didn't make sense to us.

Meltdowns are the beginnings of build-ups -- destruction and creation is the continuing spiral of life itself. We're just doing it at different times and in different places, some are on mountaintops and some are in valleys, both are beautiful and worthy of respect, because we're all watching ourselves and each other learn how to deal with simply being alive.

 



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