The Best Part Of Growing Older
The Broadway musical Spring Awakening is the quintessential show about the torments of adolescence. HBO recently aired a concert with the original cast, 20 years after the musical opened. The show begins with a hyper-active, angst-ridden group of teenage boys bemoaning “the bitch of living.”
It’s the bitch of living
And living in your head
It’s the bitch of living
And sensing God is dead …
It’s the bitch of living …
Just getting out of bed …
When I saw the show several years ago, it reminded me of my junior year abroad when I hung out with French friends who dressed in black, read Sartre and Camus, and at the ripe old age of twenty, lamented that they had lost “le goût de la vie,” the taste for life.
With the passing of years, it’s become easier for me (and I hope my friends) to experience simple moments of joy and blessing. It is one of the best parts of growing older. We recognize that the future we once thought was limitless is really contracting minute by minute. We need to savor each day.
Mary Oliver writes in her poem “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac:”
Do you need a prod?
… Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
This week, I spent time observing a chipmunk ensconced in the crook of a tree. I watched the antics of some orioles swooping up and down, flashing their sun-bright breasts, at a backyard feeder. A waste of time? Hardly.
Perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to cultivate a contemplative attitude. The naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch calls this “learning to turn one’s entire being toward the world with genuine regard, working to keep alive in ourselves that fundamental sense of openness and attention to the world we call wonder.”
Wonder. A practice favored by all the great poets, mystics and spiritual thinkers.
The Buddhists have an expression to describe the fleeting nature of life: Ichi-go-ichi-e. It means one time, one meeting. It’s a mantra that encourages us to pause, to remember that each day is its own lifetime.
In my backyard garden, the lettuce has begun to sprout, the leaves have thickened on the trees, and the lilacs are sending off their seductive scent. In an interview this month for lithub.com, the poet Ada Limón calls spring the most “drama-filled” season:
“There’s a lot of action and movement, it’s a little chaotic, and you feel it. It’s not just the flowers, everything is moving, the earth feels alive,” Limón said.
As spring pours into summer, can we wake each morning with the thought of Ichi-go-ichi-e. It is a good mantra with which to begin each wild and precious day.
Read Sara B. Franklin’s lithub interview with poet Ada Limón here at https://lithub.com/to-learn-from-the-natural-world-on-ada-limons-brilliant-poetic-project/
