247: Getting Older, Noticing More

Holding on too tightly to expectations of just about anything can trap us in a cycle of frustration and despair. And often our expectations are really ways we're trying to be in control of a situation rather than surrendering ourselves to the unfolding moment. Of course, our ability to control many circumstances so they will be just the way we want them is often beyond us. And so perhaps we might cultivate a kind of openness to the way things actually are combined with a fierce kind of intention to bring ourselves to whatever is happening with as much of our essential goodness as we can, whether that be courage, tenderness, creativity, love, truthfulness or any other of the many virtues available to human beings.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about meeting the always unexpected happenings of life with grace and presence. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.

Here's our source for this week:

Knee Sounds

The older I get the more I notice

knee sounds

my own quiet desires

dumb egos

baby’s sharp intuition

the return of the blackberries

boneheaded binaries.

Sometimes I long for an organized drawer

or a morning without the realization that one went to school with unbrushed teeth

but then I remember how short life is

how wide my forgiveness

mostly of others

more and more myself.

The noticing is mostly small.

Sometimes it’s big.

This life I walk through

is not what I expected.

How could I have imagined her first questions upon waking or his tender body?

How could I have known I would birth my own much-needed teacher on solitude?

Or care so much about those two red poppies?

Aging is a long, drawn out experiment in being wrong about how you will live, who you will be, what you will love and see

and love and see and love and see

and that’s okay.

It’s more than okay.

Each day unpromised and fecund.

I am worse than I thought

and also better.

Humanity, too.

When the violence is too much

I touch a lot of tree trunks

eat some more bread.

watch my kids sleep their sweaty sleep

and try not to let any of it

tragic or tender

feel inevitable.

Courtney Martin
courtneyemartin.com/writing/

Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash