On
March 27 our third grandchild, Aurelia, turned 1. Check out the video. She had
two extravagant parties that weekend, one on Saturday, the other on Sunday
which was a family affair. She was dressed in a lady bug costume and seemed to
revel in all the attention being paid to her. Honestly, the party wasn’t for
her. She was clueless. It was for adults, for parents of young children who
will soon have their child’s first birthday—and who may compete for a better “1st
birthday” party with other parents—or for young couples without children who naively
say to themselves, “Awww, isn’t she cute?! I want a baby.” Then they get
pregnant, and if you have kids you know the rest of the story. They are easy to
acquire but expensive and exhausting to raise. At any rate, it made me think
about aging. Richard Rohr, in a book entitled The Wild Man’s Journey, comments on aging when he wisely challenges
young men to remember the following scenario when considering their lives:
Life
is hard
You
are going to die
You
are not all that important
You
are not in control
Your
life is not about you
Pretty
blunt stuff, eh?! The prevailing wisdom of the day is different. Life is
ascent. You must climb higher and higher, make more money, achieve
greater success, stay at the top, win. But the hard realities of time can
create aged cynics, bitter old men and women, who refuse to accept life’s
paradoxes and mysteries. Rohr
challenges his readers to consider becoming what he calls wise fools. I think
he calls it a spirituality of descent. You grow wise not by ascending to the
heights of human achievement but by embracing and descending into the low realities
of life.
These
are sobering thoughts. As I reflect on being 1 its reminded me of the sobriety
of life and even the reality of death. Aurelia’s just starting. My mom’s 90 and
close to the finish line. I’m 56 at this posting. I’d rather be a wise fool
than a cynic any day!
