“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.”

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.”

– T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

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I used to get letters once in awhile, but I now get a lot of messages in the new world, sometimes 1,000 a day in one form or another, they vary wildly. Most of them are nice, some of them are not, every now and then there is a radioactive jewel that shines through and makes me feel very good to be alive and writing.

Debra wrote me from her farm: “Oh, good grief…thank you for your posts on aging and living your life. Just about every day I get inspiration in your posts.” Debra lives on a farm with nine horses, many of them old and rescued. This seems to drive her brother crazy, he is the stand-in for the voice of culture, which promotes fear and sheep-like lives at every turn. Live in an abundance of caution, is the spiritual message of our times. And buy long term care insurance.

Do not be a sheep, I tell myself almost every day, even as sheep surround me, all the way to the far horizons of life.

Debra says her brother is driving her crazy, he sends her e-mails “screaming at me to save more money for retirement (she is 61) and to save more money for long-term health care and on and on and on. I should just copy it and send it to you, y ou are the only person I know who would just shake your head.”

Actually, I don’t need to see the letter from Debra’s brother, I hear this every day of my life. And I hope there are others who would shake their heads.

The retirement and nursing homes in America are crammed with people who saved their money for  retirement and long-term care, I have met many of them in my hospice work. Along the way, most tell me they forgot to live, they were so busy preparing for the end, hoping to be secure. I am admiring of Debra, she is living a life of meaning and purpose. She has not forgotten to live her life.

Her brother is a metaphor, really, we all get those messages all the time, from family, the media, business, government, the world at large. We live in a great corporate Fear Machine. There is big money in fear, security is sold everywhere, even as so few ever find it.  Debra’s brogther has, she says, been old since he was 16, living his life in a planned and orderly way to make sure everything that might happen is prepared for. He is, she says, so sad that he and his wife will not get or rescue a house cat after years of having house cats they loved because they are “old” now – he is 65 – and so is his wife. “It drives him crazy that I have nine horses.”

All of these horses, she says, costs her most of her money and savings. Her brother tells her she should put her horses down and move into an apartment so she can save money.

Her brother, I imagine, loves her and means well. I’m sure he worries about her. It is wrong to send her frightening messages, if one must live in fear, there is no reason to force it on everyone else. He is, of course, just parroting the message of our times: spend your life in bondage and worry and sacrifice trying to buy the security that money will never buy. It seems that if you live a small or hollow life, you wants everyone around you to be small and  hollow as well.

In our culture, we are frightened into enslaving ourselves in lives we do not care for in places we don’t want to live doing work we do not love for people who care nothing for us. We give up life for the fantasy of security. I hope Debra’s brother doesn’t discover, as I have and so many others have, that security is internal, not external, and that no amount of money can prepare us for everything that might happen. Accidents happen, so does open heart surgery and divorce and deer that run into cars and disturbed people with guns in movie theaters and classrooms.

If we all had old horses and dogs and cats, does anyone doubt the world would be a healthier and happier place?

So there is the choice, Debra, who follows her heart and her passion, she says, who will work until she drops to care for those horses and die with little money in the bank and no long term insurance to pay for being locked in an elderly warehouse with no life to live. Please don’t misunderstand me, it is wise to save money and prepare for the future, if you can do it, and if you can do it and still have a life to live. It is an individual choice, it is not for me to tell Debra’s brother how to live and whether or not she should get a cat.

Some people think everyone in the world should buy a farm and move to one, I don’t. That is just a different kind of huckstering. My life is for me, not for everyone else, I know many very happy people who have chosen a simpler, easier and cheaper life than mine. And good for them. Most would be miserable on my farm.  I do not know many happy people who have traded life for the corporate idea of security, which is all and only about money, and invariably, about giving it to someone else.

“We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened,” wrote Thomas Merton. “But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.”

But it is a hopeful and  joyous thing for me to see that Debra is strong enough to decide for herself how to live. And to live. I suspect she will be stronger and more secure for caring for those horses than anyone with a big fat IRA and no life. But then, my own view may be distorted. Just because you are the only one who thinks something doesn’t mean you are right. It could mean I am wrong. It’s not for me to say.

But then, I will be 68 next week, older than Debra or her brother, and we just got a boisterous pony and a border collie puppy who has a nuclear reactor built into her body. I never feel younger or more alive than when I walk outside and see my wife riding bareback or our puppy tearing off after the sheep while I yell at her to lie down.

Thanks for your blog, she wrote, “it  refreshes me and helps me  realize I am not alone.” You are not alone, Debra, and thanks for your note. I have no advice to give you, you don’t need any. The gyroscope inside of you seems to be working well. And my blog is a gift to me.

What I thought reading your wonderful message, was this: Good for you, Debra. You know how not to be a sheep.  Perhaps the most important wisdom for any human being living in our time. You and your brother had choices to make, and you chose life. I can’t imagine anything more secure than that.