I went to a memorial service yesterday for a friend’s mother who died at 99. It was full of some 50+ people who knew this extraordinary woman - an ordinary mom who revealed the extraordinary in everyday life. She started using a computer at 83, fell in love with email and the Internet in her 90s, and spent everyday of her life learning.

Her wisdom seemed simple: observe, connect, and act. Observe the world outside and in, connect what you learn from these observations to an ever-changing template of life’s meaning, and act wisely from such knowledge wrapped in kindness and love.

She loved adventure and continued to travel until 98. Her philosophy on travel was described in an email she had written to her daughter - take advantage of your youth and run, don’t walk, to explore the world.

Yet the words spoken by family and friends revealed the energy source that fueled her longevity - love. She was respected and sought out for her wisdom - even at 99 - because her worldview was constantly changing - updated by her - as she learned more and more. She lived far from a fixed or repetitive self-centered perspective that age can sometimes bring. That was why her interactions with the world were extraordinary despite their ordinary nature.

I only met her once, at a baby shower for her grand-daughter; she was 98 that year. I spent 30 minutes with her talking about how powerful our minds are in shaping our realities. Of course she was well read on the topic and began to cite scientific studies demonstrating the thesis; she made a point to send me two books in the mail upon her return to NYC. They arrived within the week. A woman who was like a sponge for learning, elegant in dress, sophisticated in manner, and true to her word.

A chance encounter that gave me a model for the later stages of life; but then I realized, she is really a model for every stage of life.

It was perhaps most refreshing to attend a memorial service for someone who lived such a vibrant and full life - who died at a time that fit our best expectations, not too early and not following a long and painful illness. Just the natural end to one cycle of life as others - her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren - emerged to continue the process.

May she be a model for all of us as we move through the life cycle - never forgetting to create extraordinary moments in the ordinary nature of life.

The road was circuitous, winding oddly right then straightening in a sharp left turn, the dirt changing at times from asphalt, to cement, and even spurts of cobblestone. As I walked my feet were covered in various fashion of dress - shiny black heels, sensible pumps, Penny Loafers, Earthshoes, flipflops of paisley pink, stocking feet, and the most luxuriously naked barefoot.

I moved slowly with intense curiosity at times listening to the sounds filling space, seeing colors painted on the landscape as it rolled by, feeling the cool air warming from the sun, smelling new moan grass, honeysuckle, horse manure, tasting the stem of wheat stuck between my teeth, a tasty strawberry plucked from a bush, a crunchy stalk of sour rhubarb, or a juicy sweet apple. But many times I just raced along the road thinking I would get to its end faster and win the race.

Mostly I travel alone but at times I carried a backpack full of seedlings needing nourishment or I would walk hand in hand with another experiencing the road ever so slightly different.

People stop here and there too tired to travel on, resting for a moment of eternity.

I turn to look back now and then to see the road fading in the horizon - wherever I look it just continues - steady, twisting, turning, and straight. It is so cleared now of tangled bush, of clutter in the way, machete-clean, most debris brushed away so that erroneous turns are no longer possible.

I now understand the words,

“And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

(Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening by Robert Frost)

WISDOM

Wisdom is the ideology of youth seen through the landscape of life

© Susan Smalley

I’ve been feeling ‘lost’ lately, in transition, and uncertain of my direction in life, a feeling as if I am standing on a microcosm of the earth’s land plates, with my left foot on one and my right foot on another, not quite sure if they will move together or split apart. I attribute my current sense of it to my children leaving home for college along with an increased awareness of my own inevitable end of life.

Lost is perhaps one of the most frightening words in the English language. In the 1960s, I grew up with Lost in Space, a 30 minute comedy/drama series of the family Robinson traveling through space trying to find their way home to planet earth. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz is lost and trying to find her way back to Kansas. Lost, the television show about airplane passengers crashed on an island trying to get home became a media sensation. Even the short-lived television show, Life on Mars, was about a man from the current century lost in time, the 1970s. Being physically lost is a recurring theme in media, books, poetry, music, and dreams or nightmares.

Being lost is accompanied by fear, fear of the unknown and fear of isolation from friends, family, and the comforts of home. We root for those that are lost to be found, or to discover their way back home. Many times in our lives we may find ourselves lost, perhaps not physically but mentally. By that I mean, we feel a sense of deep confusion as to the ‘why’ of life, and the course of action that stems from clarity, not confusion, in relationship, work or play. Interspersed through these times of confusion are ones where we feel ‘found’, we are clear and focused in meaning, purpose, and course of action. The latter are usually associated with emotions of happiness, joy, and bliss while the former often include negative emotions of fear, doubt, and others (sadness, anger, envy, etc.). Over the landscape of life, we begin to see the repetitive nature of this game of “lost and found” until we see it as the game it is. It is in this knowing that we may experience a feeling of it as ‘All Good’, both the times of being lost and times of being found.

People often turn to religion and faith to seek shelter from this sense of being ‘lost’. But, religion is not necessary to discover the continuous nature of this game of Lost and Found that is life. It may be discovered when sitting quietly in meditation, or walking in nature, or in times of deep connection with an ‘other’ - whether that be music, art, or a loved one. In such times, we lose our ’self’ as ’separate’ to something larger of which we are a part and in this experience we can discover an acceptance or appreciation of life ‘as it is’, the game itself, the continuous process of Lost and Found. The waxing and waning of our individual sense of purpose or meaning is enveloped by this blanket of appreciation in such a way that ‘All Good’ rings forth in spades.

Remembering this game of Lost and Found is like realizing that neither can occur without the other, each is a required part of the game. Like Hide and Seek, one person hides so the other can find them. Both parts are crucial for the game to continue. No side is more important than the other. It’s All Good.

My husband stopped in our hometown today in Indiana for a few days to visit his mom. She’s 86 and still hard at work running their family business, a roller skating rink. My husband and his 11 brothers and sisters grew up skating and working ‘the rink’ (DJs, skate guards, ticket takers, snack bar, skate rentals, coaches, instructors, etc.). Their childhood was quite different from the one our three children in southern California experienced with soccer, dance, summer camps, family vacations, and lots of time traveling and hanging out. In fact, it was quite different than the one I experienced as a child on the other side of that town in Indiana, with two sisters, dance, girl scouts, camp, summer jobs, etc.

There is something interesting in the way my mother-in-law approaches life and I am guessing she may have had an element of that already when my husband was a child. That something is a sense of contentment. She isn’t someone who strives to have something ‘else’, for things to ‘change’ or for that matter for things to ’stay the same’. She seems rather satisfied, happy if you will, for things to be just as they are. In many ways, my husband is just the same - although he loves the challenge of building things from ideas, he’s always had a streak of contentment present from the day I met him 37 years ago.

I am sure my mother-in-law feels sad, I am even guessing angry at times (although I’ve never seen that) in the day-to-day struggles of life - whether it’s an arthritic knee or a dissatisfied offspring - but underlying that is a sense of contentment for life. She has a sort of joy about her lot in life, a lot that includes the loss of her lifelong partner, the loss of a child, and the ups and downs of business ownership.

How does such contentment arise? I’m pretty sure that it comes from letting go of wanting things to stay the same or wishing things would be different. In the acceptance of things as they are, and in living very presently with things as they arise, a contentment takes shape.

She never fails to rise in time to get to the roller rink by early morning and to work a full day before opening the rink to the public at night. On evenings they hold ‘all night skates’ you can be sure she will be taking tickets at the door. She’s experienced times of war (WWII, Korea War), financial strife, racial prejudices, the hippie era (a time my husband and I couldn’t enter the rink because his hair was too long and I was braless). These experiences surely helped get her to where she is today - a wise woman of loving- kindness who exemplifies the American value of hard work and decent living.

I’ve seen her wisdom emerge as she has aged and I have seen my husband reflect her kindness in their relationship. He calls her often, enjoys hearing about her day, and just likes to ‘be near her’ via phone or in person. As a mom of our three children (2 boys and a girl), I love the thought that they might follow in their Dad’s footsteps and I in hers - to embody contentment in the later stage of life.

New Years Day is just another of the multitude of new beginnings in life.

As 2009 begins, I am reminded of how many new beginnings we experience throughout our lives. Perhaps we all know that saying that every moment is a new beginning (’today is the first day of the rest of your life’… blah blah blah) but only when there is a radical shift from past moments to present is the evidence for that truth big enough, the transition bumpy enough, that we recognize it for its profound truth.

New Year’s Day does mark a new beginning by date but that doesn’t usually lend itself to some radical shift or change in our lives. Those changes happen at times when we least expect them, marked by extraordinary moments in ordinary life.

For example, a few months ago I went to a routine lecture at UCLA and bumped into a colleague I hadn’t seen for several years. Enthusiastically I shouted her name and walked up to greet her. She reacted oddly, as if she wasn’t sure who I was, and when I asked ‘how are you?’ she remarked, ‘old’. She clearly wasn’t the colleague I had known; something had changed dramatically. I found out later that she has been diagnosed with a form of dementia and was beginning to show signs of it.

It brought to the fore of my thoughts the physical changes that happen with age, some more serious than others, and the reminder that change - new moments - arise again and again in life.

My children being home from college over the holidays was another reminder of this repetition of new beginnings (and endings - or ‘deaths’ that accompany them). My son remarked over Christmas how much he ‘loved my help in his life, when he asks for it’ but appreciates it if I don’t get involved otherwise. Wow, that realization - that my children are now the directors of their lives and I (and my husband) are but the support team for them - again marks a ‘new beginning’ and ‘ending’ of a previous existence.

I am constantly amazed by how radical the shift is with the last child leaving home and how large the divide between the role as parent when your children are young to the role as parent of adults. And as they become comfortable in directing their own lives, the tables begin to change with my husband and I noticing their nurturing behavior toward us and us as recipients rather than the other way around.

So many mini moments since our last child left for college are constant reminders of the necessity to ‘let go’ of one role and embrace a new one over and over in life.

Such new beginnings make New Years Day pale in comparison.