I’ve spent much of my life thinking and writing that as I get older, the best and most of my life is behind me, not ahead of me.
This week, while meditating in my silent hour and reading Parker Palmer, Henri Nouwen, and Joan Chittister, I had the kind of revelation that surfaces occasionally.
We live in a troubled world of lies, the Church Of Greed, misinterpretations, conspiracies, bone-chilling politicians, and conventional wisdom, many of these conceived to frighten us into a kind of slave labor, working all of our lives for people who are too often selfish and care nothing about us.
Why do we listen to these people? Why do we permit ourselves to be led to a kind of cultural slaughter like cows heading to the butcher?
The number of billionaires and millionaires is one of the fastest-growing populations in America, and for the rest of us, this wealth might as well be in the Antarctic, stashed under the ice.
Few Americans will ever see this kind of money or “success.” If I wish to find happiness and meaning, as I do, we are on our own. I set out to find love and stick with it. No one can take that feeling away from me.
Life can be frightening, and I realize now that the answer for me is not about making more money for people who care only about money.
That is just a new kind of slavery.
This means the best moments of my life will only come from looking deeply into change and impedance and freeing myself from the fears associated with safety and independence.
That’s what I did, and it has worked for me. I won’t wait for the rest of my life; it’s constantly improving. My guru is inside me, not outside, from some politician, cable news, or online influencer.
We rarely get the chance or dare to have the will to find our vocations, pursue our passions, and follow our bliss.
It’s too expensive and too dangerous; bow your head, suck it up, get a day job, be bitter and frustrated all of your life, and save those millions of dollars needed to end your life comfortably in America.
We are an aspiritual nation, driven in part by fear, hatred, and manipulation. We have been taught to judge our lives regarding the money we make.
If you want to see how secure the corporate enslaved people are when they age, come and visit a Medicaid home or almost any Nursing home.
If you are not in that famed one percent, you will hear story after story of savings from decades of hard work lost in a flash soon after the first illness.
I volunteer in such a facility, and the stories I hear again are of wasted and regretted lives spent working in pursuit of more money, not happiness or fulfillment. I’ve never met anyone who told me their IRA or savings made them happy and safe.
I learned that I had no idea what security meant.
I’m learning that it means knowing yourself and following your heart and soul. That is as secure as most humans will ever be. I’m learning to accept the loss, struggle, and tragedy.
If you doubt it, consider how many billionaires still offer pension plans and good health care.
Count them on the figures of one hand. How skilled they are at dividing us and sowing mistrust and hatred. How poor they are in caring for the people who make them unspeakably rich.
They could pay for the education of millions of young people if they wished and buy good health care for many more. They don’t. They built homes that were too big and yachts that were obscene.
We are slowly edging towards a Third World.
People live on the streets, can’t pay for health care, can’t afford houses and apartments, and support and vote for criminals, traitors, liars, and thieves. Women must put their lives at risk to make cold and uncaring politicians popular.
I decided I had to make up my mind about all this.
This is not the world I wish to be in or how I wish to live out my life. I feel a change coming; I feel a tsunami of compassion forming. I believe in the mystical Century of Spirituality. It is coming, and rage and suffering will bring it to life.
Prophets whisper in my ears and tell me we will be a gentler and kindler country when the wheel turns again.
If we want happiness, we have to make it. And that is possible.
To break away, I realized I had to stop and go inward, to think long and hard and honestly about how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
The best part of my life, I was told again and again, was behind me. It is such a powerful cliche that I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t believe it, including me, for most of my life.
It is a taboo to celebrate the joys of aging. In America, it is sometimes a taboo to be old.
I started thinking about it.
I went inside of myself for guidance, not outside.
I no longer feel the rest of my life is behind me. However long I live, the best of my life is yet to come. That’s up to me; I’m not a politician or corporate marketer. I get to decide what the best part of life is.
The revelation was this: I had succumbed to “old talk,” the dread, demoralizing, and depressing language of the old, deprecating and belittling themselves.
Every life has a trajectory, and I pondered mine.
The best came relatively late for me, not from the past, but from now, and I see that the best of my life is ahead of me now. I was living a life defined by other people, not myself.
Old talk – “at our age, etc.” – is poison to me. I suspect it kills more people than illness. If one thinks the best of life is over, my answer is to make my life better than ever, no matter how long it lasts.
I think Zip has helped to trigger this awareness unexpectedly. He is a spirit dog who comes for a reason.
I don’t believe any animal is responsible for my life, but he did wake me up a bit.
A cat I love deeply came just at the time when I was supposed to look back with regret and self-pity—old talk in the head. Am I too old to adopt a cat? It doesn’t seem so. I am grateful to myself for not bowing to that BS.
When Flo and Minnie died within a few months of each other, I assumed I was getting too old to get another Barn Cat. One cat rescue group refused to talk to me about getting a cat rescue to live in my barn.
I was, in fact, too old to get a young animal, one group said, and another because I didn’t promise to keep the cat inside, and yet another I didn’t agree to let anyone come and inspect my house because the cat wasn’t going to be inside the home.
I failed the tests just before anyone insisted on seeing my income tax returns so they could see how much I made and whether I could afford to feed and care for a cat.
I found a sane and helpful local cat rescue group (“Zip and I will be “honored” for Jon Katz and Maria Wulf to adopt him,” one fosterer said), and I had Zip within a couple of weeks.
We couldn’t be happier, neither, it seems could he.
The Zip experience has been one kind of trigger for me. He dropped right out of nowhere.
He symbolized my freedom and attitude. I could remain in the world and peacefully ride the waves of birth and death. And I love a cat when I wish.
The idea written by a Buddhist monk is to “remain in the world of waves while abiding in the nature of water.” Acceptance of life, good or bad.
So many good things happened late in my life when I opened up to them and let them into my world. No amount of money has ever made me as happy as this, and I once made a lot of it. My life is filled with goodness, love, and meaning.
It’s not a perfect life. It’s just my life. I came to the country in my 60’s. I’m not done yet.
I needed a spiritual dimension to my life and to open my eyes to what life is about and what I wanted.
This did not bring me the anger I see and feel around me, but a peace I always wanted but never found. One more thing that was ahead of me, not behind me.
I began to rethink this idea that the best in life was behind me or ever really needed to be behind me. I don’t look back; as a rule, nothing is there for me. I don’t look too deeply into the future either; I can’t predict it.
But the past few years have been the best of my life, and that, I see, is a choice, not an act of God and nature. In the now, I’m finding what I wanted to find. And I’ve yet to meet anyone with the right to tell me how to live.
Once I got serious about changing my life, it changed: in short order, I found Maria, a new and manageable Bedlam Farm, Red, Zinnia, Zip Bud, and Fate.
I found a Leica camera, became an artist and photographer, and started taking pictures of flowers. I started working at the Mansion and with refugee children worldwide.
One miracle is this: my flower photos are bringing happiness all over the country. That brings me happiness every day.
This kept me far from hate, grievance, judgment, and conspiracy. I won’t join the fray.
Politicians might lie, but I won’t, and I can’t any longer. People might drift to unhappiness, but I won’t, and I haven’t.
I have a new cliche bouncing around in my head: The best of life is ahead of me, no matter how long I live.
I am happier and safer than ever.
