Acquire The Courage
A friend gave this card to me. At the time I didn’t consider myself in old age, nor did I think I was a master. I now can respond in the positive to both. Both have taken a very long time to achieve. Neither has been easy.
For ten years I’ve meditated on Miller’s advice. It is so layered. My first meditation was about “play”. I put together two thoughts: “to do what children did” and the idea of “play”. We define “child’s play” as something easily done. This is mistaken. The activity of a child’s play is innate, like breathing. We confuse this with being “easily done”. Easy is not the essence of a child’s play. The essence of child’s play is being unfettered, a world free of time, not judging, and being creative. To play is to explore boundaries and to explore with no boundaries. All of nature plays like a child. The wind plays with the leaves of trees, the fabric of kites, the sails of ships; blowing adventurers to new shores. Nature’s play compels our fingers to make music, our feet to run; kicking a ball. Play moves our imagination to write a play; create a new dish, to reflect on inner and outer worlds. Play is an amino acid of life’s DNA. Play is necessary to become a master. Miller understood this. In a subtle and profound way he points to this circle of life. Play, on the path to mastery, becomes “practice”, with experience becomes “insight”, which tempered by discipline becomes “knowledge”, with compassion becomes “wisdom”, which allows up engage the world in a playful manner; unfettered, timeless, not judging, and creative - taking one back to the beginning. To play, to master, to masterly play. That is the way.
My second meditation continues to be “why do I cease to play”? Why am I held back from exploring, from being unfettered, of being stuck in time, of being judgemental, and from being creative? Acting like an adult as it were. (Perhaps the definition of “adult” is to be bound by convention, welded to the clock, unaccepting of others and boring. When strangers ask “where did you grow up?” my usual answer is “I haven’t.” Yes, why be an adult?). I have spent a lifetime getting old and a lifetime investigating the triggers that freeze my energy. It is a meditation on fear. Fear is the Devil’s sister. Fear is the farmer planting the evil seeds of doubt and shame. The weeds of doubt and shame are persistent requiring a compassionate and constant gardener to remove them.
I believe that compassionate gardener is the Hindu goddess, Saraswati - a four-armed deity; holding a book, a rosary, a water pot and a musical instrument called a veena. She is the goddess of knowledge, music, flowing water, abundance and wealth, art, speech, wisdom, learning. Although childless, if she had a child, it would be Play.
There are many poisons to combat Fear - acts of anger, excessive consumption of alcohol, and compulsive acquisition, to recognize a few - that stunt growth, but the use of these poisons are not sustainable, healthy, or enduring.
One aspect of my gardening; tending to heart and soul, is putting words down on this page. I am kneeling, finding root and carefully pulling out the weed, to be composted and returned to my earth. I’ve noticed my “gardening” habits are similar to my real-life farmer friends - spring is filled with hope and energy, hard labor in summer’s heat and a bit of exhaustion towards the beginning of fall; letting weeds creep back in until hard freeze pushes plants to retreat or die, some returning to the fields the coming season, once again invading.
My third meditation on Miller’s words is the act of acquiring courage to do what children do. There are two actions - to acquire courage and to do what children do knowing nothing. (I leave a question asked and unanswered, do children really know nothing?). One facet of acquiring courage is overcoming fear - weeding the garden; removing the weeds of fear for me is to write, Writing is not the seed of courage, it only prepares me to plant. (I examine this “gardening activity”; writing; in a blog I wrote many years ago - Suicidal Mission. )
So, I write, I meditate, to keep fear at bay and acquire the courage to keep moving forward. The second act is to do. Over coming fear, being courageous may provide balance and acceptance, they are not the action Miller implores, however. He implores us “to do what children did when they knew nothing.” Miller encourages us to play - unfettered, without prejudice or fear, unconstrained by time and with imagination.
Here I am, in old age, a master of what I do, comfortable with who I am, forgiving and forgiven, standing in awe of the limitless possibilities - and with a promise from Death; while my time will come it is not yet. So! What do I do with this?
Now is the time to play!
Mark Rosenstein,
Marshall, NC