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A few years ago I traveled to Costa Rica with my best friend, who was also approaching her 80th year, on a voyage into the unknown — perhaps our last great adventure before we settled into a more permanent home life.
We arrived at our hostel in late afternoon, after a grueling cross-country ride in a jeep, and went for a dip in the early evening surf on a huge and glorious beach. No one could really swim there because the waves were enormous—it was a surfer’s paradise!
That first night I dreamed that a gigantic wave came toward me. I’d learned to calculate when to dive through a big roller so as not to be thrown and dragged in the sand when I lived near the coast of Peru. But I realized I could neither outrun this towering wall of water, nor “handle” it in the many ways I’d been able to deal with emergencies in my eventful life. I felt completely helpless, unable to gauge when to dive through to the other side, knowing I would have to depend on some unknown intelligence to choose the right moment. As I prepared to dive and almost certainly to die, I gave up knowing what to do and offered myself to the unknown.
Was this dream about the end of my life? Was it telling me how to prepare for whatever future exists after death? Those of us who have experienced a serious illness, a near-death encounter, or cared for aged parents may be better prepared to face the reality of life’s end. But accepting our own mortality isn’t a one-time event. Rather, it’s a process that may take years.
The fact is that something dies at every moment, and something new is born, so we are more familiar with loss than we may think. In any case, whether young or old, openness to the great unknown that is called death will teach us more about life, which is, after all, equally mysterious and just as unknown.
For starters, we could practice accepting change, whether a change in our abilities, our status, or even our capacity to remain independent. We may have lost our worldly power, no longer in command of armies or corporations, or influencers in the little world of family and friends, but we continue to have an important place in society. Our power now lies in an ability to see through the veils of inaccuracy, fakery and downright lying to the truth of any situation, and tell it like we see it.
As the years roll by, more inner noise overloads the head brain. Repetitions of old ideas and judgments may be on the increase at the same time that outer noises become more annoying or more difficult to parse. Songs, phrases, words, pop up uninvited. But behind such new difficulties sits a solid mass of life experience, perhaps even a whole library of lived knowledge. We have learned many things, known many people, discovered many truths. So we can ask, who is this person we stand in now? There is no such thing as an ordinary life, so in what ways has yours or mine been extraordinary? It can be useful to review our life and write down some of the adventures and discoveries that have forged us into the person we are today.
As our sense of security wanes and more moments of sudden fatigue appear, along with over-reaction to loud noises and a faltering balance, we are forced to come to terms with giving up knowing what to do. We can and should continue to exercise body and brain every day, but our future will inevitably contain even more radical experiences. Let’s choose to live more fully the time that is ours, and the life that has been given us, whatever its limitations.
