The Great Secret of Aging

"The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion." Doris Lessing

To me, this comment is insightful on a very basic, flesh-and-bones level - that, despite our changing  physical appearance, our thoughts and responses are primal, those we had as children and teens and young adults.

I have had as role models at varying times certain mothers, certain Christians, certain green witches, certain Buddhists, and certain deeply spiritual women with no particular label.

I was attracted to changing as much as they in the directions each took. I didn't succeed, according to my own desires, to fully embrace what they stood for. There was little or no stirring inside on which to build commitment. I was never ready to derail the life I was already leading for one that promised me more but whose promise I didn't fully believe in.

In the end (the now), I am more like I was at age 18 or so - simple in my needs and wants yet searching in my soul for a fulfillment still unattained, unable to take seriously anymore some of the more esoteric and mystical pursuits of my middle-age.

Despite the severe ups and downs of life within a beloved family beset by physical and mental illness (the former mine, the latter our firstborn's), gravitation toward the familiar is still prompted by nostalgic yearning. It's so hard to step out of the box we know.

My basic instincts are to survive and to mother. Or rather, to survive in order to mother.

I try to continue to believe in the Heaven we've been led to believe in because I ache to see my father, grandparents, uncles and aunts. If that is not what Heaven is about, then we've sold a bill of goods!

As far as I know I haven't had any angels on my side. I am one of those who, despite years of desire and concerted efforts, has not achieved mastery over the human condition. Vanity, covetousness, envy... I guess all the deadly sins, still reside within me.

There's no disputing that we continue to evolve as we go through life: gaining wisdom, learning through mistakes in judgment, altering our perspective as we gain insight. Personally, I picture that development as adding on to our inner core, which itself remains central to our being despite the layering of life's experiences.

I can even see how that core is evident in our children, or some of them. With six to compare and contrast, I can understand on a psychic level where some of ours are coming from because we share that inner core.

Those who are more like The Hub are harder for me to figure out. That which drives their thinking and reacting the way they do clearly does not come from me. Hub-Bub and I are so different from each other, and he, in turn, doesn't understand, even as he tries to, what makes my "clones" tick.

I feel akin to my own father more than my mother as far as inner core is concerned. Although matching my mom in many personality traits, our inner cores - our spiritual natures - are not the same. My mother has said (she's in her 80s) that she still feels inside like the young girl she was in the old country. I'm probably more like her than I think!