Release & Catch

 

Ah, those wee small hours insights.  Been awake for the past few hours, my mind ranging over several different ponders, from the uncommonly canny mind of Tom Cotton, to putting together Monday lunches with local artists, to how many times I've experienced older friends taking/offering a fresh look at longtime closely held beliefs.

The first two can wait for deeper ponders.  Since 3:55 a.m., my won't-sleep thoughts kept coming back to the third.

For years, it's occurred to me that one of the great advantages of getting up there in age is gaining a wider perspective of your life.  People can, if they are of a mind to, look back over their years & see what they've done, where they've been, how they got to where they are.  Many, not all, can see the layers of their lives, the outgrown shells left along the way as their experiences & thinking changed, grew.

Over my lifetime, I've come to know a wide range of oldsters & ancients.  It amazes me, looking back, that most were more than intelligent - they were curious.  

My guess is that's the sort of friends my mother attracted, that it's a quality I always expected in others & ultimately ended up bringing out.   Turns out, it's an excellent grace to have, working with older friends.  If you're open to adventuring, it's safe to be questioning around me.

 

It feels that too many older people, especially those getting up there in years, feel shut down rather than opened up, which is a loss all around.  My older friends often surprise me with what they really think & value.

Smiling, remembering a time a contemporary of mine was asked to talk to a group of older women who got together every Wednesday afternoon to talk about whatever grabbed their interest.  They wanted to hear from people who were pushing for women to be ordained as ministers into our currently male-only religion.  Many, perhaps most, of those advocating for an inclusive ministry were leery of the invitation.  E-mails zinged back & forth, each basically warning, "Be careful - it's an ambush."  

 

But Soni went - with an open mind & heart - and was surprised by the response.  Only one of the women was openly, albeit politely, hostile.  The rest wanted to hear, wanted to see where the others were coming from.  At least one of the older women confided that she, too, wanted to be a minister.  The older women didn't think the way the others had assumed they would.  And some of them were as surprised at that as the others - they hadn't realized it until it the discussion.

One very senior senior was astonished to realize that what she'd always believed turned out to have evolved over the years.  In her early nineties, sound of mind if a bit infirm in body, she surprised to discover that she could let go of her long-held beliefs & let herself sort of free fall to where her thinking actually was at that point in time.  

Instead of catch & release, it was release & catch.  

 
This realization hit her when she was sitting in a small private chapel listening to a worship service lead by two young women, women she'd not only know since they were babies, but whose mothers she'd known as babies!  She talked later about how it felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach when the "girls" entered the chapel to open the service, but took herself in hand, told herself, "Those are just your old guard thoughts kicking in.  Let go & allow whatever comes up to come up."  And was stunned to realize she was actually okay with it.  

My older - okay, ancient friend was able to experience that because she was out & about, participating in a controversial conversation.  It might have been the first time she felt comfortable not completely agreeing with either side.  It might have been the first time she realized that she didn't have to be all one way or the other.  

Through conversations with her, through invaluable bits & pieces picked up at Friday evening cocktail parties with Mom & her even older female friends, through so many gabs with my own older friends, I'm continually awed.  One of the reasons older people can be so much wiser than youngsters like me is they have the length of years to look back over, the experience to realize - if open enough - "Oh, I used to think this was absolutely true, but now all I've seen & done & had happened makes me realize, 'But maybe not.'"  

It's my experience that, given a receptive & safe environment, my older friends are far more open to seeing what they actually value rather than what they believe is important, belief being what they thought they held dear & value being what they actually do.  

 

We spend our childhood & young adult years learning what we think we believe.  It feels like most of us spend our middle years reflecting those beliefs, holding onto them as our guiding principles & most closely held values.  It's in our upper years, when a lifetime of experiences roll out behind us, that we're better able to step back, look back, look around & consider what's really what.  

Or not.  Not every olderster & ancient is cut out for inner fishing, they might balk at release & catch, wanting to hold onto what they've got.  But for the ones who do - they're the ones I want to hang out with, the ones I want to learn from.  To me, they are the master fishers of life.