On Laughter, Suffering Well, Age, and Love

This morning I caught myself laughing in the mirror. Full belly laugh. I don't remember why. Just a little inside joke I think. Silly little Jason moment. You know what that's like? To feel like a child again? There was a time not so long ago where I had forgotten. A time where I realized I had forgotten how to truly laugh.

I've been thinking a lot lately about age, and the wisdom that comes with age. I've been pondering how age makes it easier to relinquish your need to impress others, and find your soul. You can really just sense when someone has gone through this, can't you? You see them at the coffee shop or the grocery story, and their smallest movement or glance at their eyes betrays them.

Obviously not everyone figures this out with age. Some 20 year olds have found it. Some 80 year olds have still forgotten. But there's something that comes with time—more opportunities to experience pain, and more importantly to to suffer well—that will always lead you down the windy path to some deep little pool. When you look in that pool, you see yourself again for the first time, and your life can never be the same again.

At the coffee shop this morning, I felt like reading a little bit of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Starting at the beginning:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Firstly, he was my exact age here! And he's expressing what I am beginning to understand—something I've understood intellectually for a long time, but something I'm finally beginning to feel. And feeling is a more important kind of understanding.

A connection to the world, which comes from seeing yourself as not-separate from it. When you have this connection, and put this love into the world, you can't help but feel it coming back. And you begin to realize that the fears you had of what other people thought about you were a disconnect from that feeling of connection.

VividVoid shared this little image this morning. Isn't it funny that children's books always seem to hold the deepest truths? It's like we are trying to pass on what we finally understand as adults to children. But they're like "yeah I already know," and then they forget, only to remember with age, and try to pass it on to their children.

Choosing to see beauty in the world is the way by which we unmask our own beauty. And it's not a cause-and-effect relationship, they are two sides of the same coin. Since we are an inseparable part of the world.

One time, on Twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson made a nihilistic statement: "The universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent to our pains. Have a nice day!"

Norm Macdonald clapped back with one of the greatest possible responses:

Here's the thing: I am a meaning making machine. You might believe there is no purpose to life, no meaning in the universe—but there is!!! Because I made it. And the I am part of the universe. Therefore, there is meaning in the universe. And you are part of the universe (and part of me) too.

A few weeks ago, in a weird mood, I tweeted:

My mom made eggs when she was just a lil thing inside my grandmas womb. One was me (is me?). Or was that my grandma who made the eggs in my mom? Really hard to tell the difference between grandma my mom and me and the universe.

Our true self is beneath the surface on the scary hike down the mountain to the valley of soul. So many of us are afraid are looking at our own reflections in that dark pool. Afraid because we know we will be forever changed. I know at times I'm afraid to look because my current self isn't ready to let go. Change, and little deaths, can be terrifying.

We are also afraid because: what if the world rejects your true self?

But how could you ever be truly rejected by the world? You are a part of it. In the same way that within us we can never truly be rid of parts we don't like—they are us. The irony is that the face in the reflection understands this, and is not afraid. It is knocking at the door, patiently waiting for us to open. What is required of us is a katabasis - a conscious descent - into our own wound. Where the wound is our gift is too.

After descending into the wound, and sitting with it by the edge of the pool, we begin to see the suffering of others. And while we can't make the terrible mistake of descending into the wound or carrying that wound for others—for that is work every one must do for themselves—we can better empathize, encourage, and console. And as we do this, we show up for ourselves with curiosity and compassion, instead of with a righteous sword to conquer and subdue our shadow.

"As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul." Healing our relationship and connection to universe, and healing the connections between our own parts and wounds is the same.

Surrendering our limited ideas of who we are—giving up maintaining the boundaries that don't make sense—is something I think age and 'suffering well' bring. Then we can feel what Rumi said:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn't make any sense.

(I can never stop quoting this, and it lives on my wall)

As we view the world with these new eyes, we begin to see our own reflection in the eyes of others. And know that their reflection is in our eyes as well.

We cannot see that reflection and be afraid of being seen at the same time. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."