Old age isn’t a battle, old age is a massacre.

 Philip Roth

How well said.  This getting older is a process and I know it began the moment we were born and that should be comforting, but it isn’t.  Just because you were born into a process doesn’t mean you were automatically given the skills to cope with it.  It’s a bit like someone throwing you into a river and telling you to swim, you might be lucky and have enough visceral and body fat to keep afloat (I suspect, I would float quite high in the water, myself!) ,but unless someone had taught you to swim, you are not going to learn in the next few minutes of your life, are you?  So what are the life skills that you need to sustain this massacre.  Well here is my list

1.     a sense of humour because if you cannot laugh at yourself you are going to be very tired of others doing it for you

2.     don’t assume old age makes you smell less – the opposite is true.  As we get older we are like orange juice concentrate and we become stronger, thicker and less dilute.  This applies to all our attributes, so if we are slightly sarcastic in our twenties, we will be bitingly bitter in our thirties and really rancid in our forties.  Some personal progress on a daily basis is not a nicety, it is a necessity.

3.     most things you see around you are a distortion of the human spirit not its essential nature.  The good news is that people are much nicer than we think and this applies to you too.

4.     It’s a good idea to look around you and feel that you are surrounded by spiritual giants, it will compensate for the fact that you, probably like me, are from the pigmy tribe of spirituality.  Don’t think of this as a negative, the humble posture of learning this engenders will help you grow.

5.     Everything you have and everything you own will eventually be taken away from you, it’s a fact, face it.  Now, spend your precious remaining time on what cannot be taken away from you, your service to humanity.  If you don’t know what that means, find out and fast!

6.     Be conscious of the fragrances around you, jasmine brought to you on the night air, rose’s wafting across the garden and those human scents of cooperation, concord and love.  Surround yourself with such things until they become part of you.  It will help you smell less in old age!

Sometimes when we are being massacred something beautiful happens, that takes ones breath away.  Dr. James Simon, born in Berlin on 29th September 1880, was a solidly-trained composer, pianist and musicologist. In late March or early April, 1944, Simon was one of a thousand inmates deported to Terezin, a Nazi camp. 

Simon quickly entered into the musical life of the ghetto.  On July 9, 1944, he set Psalm 126 for Karel Fischer’s Durra-Chor, which was performed seven times in Terezin between July and October. 

From Psalm 126

"Our mouths were filled with laughter,

    our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations,

    The Lord has done great things for them.

The Lord has done great things for us,

    and we are filled with joy."

On October 12 he boarded the transport to Auschwitz and died in a gas chamber shortly after his arrival.

He wrote on a dedication sheet to a friend,

 ‘Do righteous deeds and throw them into the sea.’ – Arab proverb

I hope you, like me, have caught a fragrance of this sweet soul and feel the benefit of knowing such flowers existed.

Pain - a path of Grace or a damaged zone?

There are times when emotions must be allowed to run where they will.  By refusing to allow them free reign it just creates a dangerous build up of hurtful feelings behind a weak dam of self will.  Rather if they are allowed to trickle where they will, one does enter forbidden regions dark and loathsome but eventually sunshine shores are discovered around unexpected corners.  The damage that is done by clinging to emotions is that long after the event, flooding has wrought havoc through previously healthy regions.  The resulting clean up inside, can take the rest of one’s life and even then not be successful.  The preoccupation with damage control will not sanction the healthy regrowth of natural emotional undergrowth.

To see a future, some hope, some way out is so important and yet during a stage of grief there is no such light.  Tears come and go yet strangely little relief.  The relief that does come is usually mostly self- pity or some other self indulgence and as such is leading nowhere good.

Time will usher you from one form of grief to another and the progress is personal, not to be forced, not to be slowed.  Those you love can sometimes act as a bridge over deep chasms that would slow progress or vice-a-versa lose you much ground.  These are acceptable risks, life without love is much too pointless and these advances and setbacks should be accepted with as much grace as possible.  It is strange that in moments of pain, loss, anger, and resentment it is then that one’s resources of what I can only call grace are at their peak.  Grace, those moments when a transcending emotion takes hold and lifts one above normal human limits into a different plane altogether.  From this plane one gets a glimpse of the purpose of all these degrees of pain, a vision of the path that is the river of your life and a sense of rightness amidst all that has seemed so wrong.