From Armor to Curiosity Amid a Golden Anniversary

IF YOU THINK YOU'RE ENLIGHTENED, GO SPEND A WEEK WITH YOUR FAMILY.

-RAM DASS

I took the Ram Dass challenge last week. 50 years of marriage warrants a family celebration, so we had one COVID-style (i.e., my immediate family stayed in private homes together for 5 nights as we hit up 3 nature-based locales across MN).

I, uh, did not pass the "enlightened" test. ;)

I've long said that midlife is the time when we begin to disrobe from the armor we put on as pre-teens/teens to manage a complex world. I've been "doing the work" for a while now. And, yet...

BAM! Old patterns popped up. Judgments were cast. Grudges re-emerged. Those of others, as well as my own.

I didn't want to distract from Mom and Dad's Golden Anniversary. So I decided to get curious. And I was reminded of this Carl Rogers quote:

“Below the level of the problem situation about which the individual is complaining—behind the trouble with studies, or wife, or employer, or with his own uncontrollable or bizarre behavior, or with his frightening feelings, lies one central search. It seems to me at bottom each person is asking, “Who am I, really? How can I get in touch with this real self, underlying all my surface behavior? How can I become myself?”

I did some journaling to reflect on these questions and arrived at important insights. Perhaps these questions may be a catalyst for you, too. Perhaps this is where our real work begins...which is the perfect opportunity to share this brief poem from Wendell Berry:

Our Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.