Wise Women

THE SENILITY PRAYER: Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference. - author unknown

I think wisdom of elder sisters comes slowly, mine did, and I did not realize I was really wise until, one day, I realized what things I had conquered.  As well, I knew that it was, almost suddenly, time to truly be Present, to be authentically real, to be aware in a deep level that comes from 'been there; done that!"  Suddenly there is a vague gnawing that this is my life and every morning is the only day I have to change what I need to change about myself.  I think Life prepares us for all the choices we made and their consequences.  Truly, we become Wise Old Birds.

Never mind the woulda, coulda, shoulda's.  You did not!  No discussion, no shame, no guilt, no way!  You did what you did, you chose what you chose, you lived it out and it either worked or not and you lived any past repercussions already.  You cannot fix it and, perhaps, others fixed residuals already and no use holding on to it now.   It sure would have been easier if we had forgiven our self for stuff a long time ago instead of hauling it around with us like a ball and chain.  Yes, maybe we are still angry about something in our past, but of what use is that?  No one else can fix stuff from your past, erase it, or, maybe they do not even think about it, never mind feel anything for it.  Some things will stay imprinted on your very skin; wrinkles, the story of so many things.  Lord, we have learned some lessons, or not, but they were there to learn and maybe we learn that we have learned them now.

Say this out loud:

"Man, I have done some things!"  

What inflection did you use?  Did you say it sadly?  Did you say it with laughter in your voice?  Did you say it with a satisfied sigh?  How did you say it is the key to how much you are living in the past, in your head.  It dictates how you feel about yourself.   Now try it with all the inflections.  Which feels more Present?  How you say it will tell you how much you have learned.  Perhaps we need to learn those lessons now.

There were wisdoms all along the journey of our life.  Our fears came to naught or they came true.  Most of our fears find a way to work themselves out.  We learned not to force things.  We learned to accept things.  When fear stepped in, we either learned a huge lesson or we moved into paralysis and we kept those fears tucked in dark places of our soul and waited for someone else to solve them for us, or we simply got over it.  

In the movie, Meet Joe Black, he, Death, visits an old Jamaican lady who is ready to die.  She recognizes him as Death.  

Jamaican Woman : Hmm. It nice it happen to you. Like you come to the island and had a holiday. Sun didn't burn you red-red, just brown. You sleep, and no mosquito eat you. But the truth is, it bound to happen... if you stay long enough. So take that nice picture you got in your head home with you, but don't be fooled. We lonely here mostly too. If we lucky, maybe... we got some nice pictures to take with us.

This movie is a classic beloved movie to me.  There are some beautiful scenes and there is a beautiful script in it.  I think that this movie really changed my thoughts about Past events and I came to journey apiece with Peace with my Past. I began to focus on the photographs rather than the negatives.

Suddenly we find ourselves worrying about the future (if we are compulsive worriers rather than optimists).  We can totally know that we are worrying unnecessarily, but we will spiral down with our worries the moment we give our Lizard Brain the chance.  I think we, women, tend to think we need to solve everything and so we fuss and fret over things we never did find a solution to.  I do know that worrying makes me feel older.  I am pretty sure I could worry myself into a panic.  Would it solve anything?  No!  It just leads to a spiral of unhappiness and fuss and fret, and earlier aging, nothing more.  It robs us of a positive future.  

I am wise enough to now, the more I let others take care of me, the less certain I am becoming in taking care of myself when I am more than older.  I think we are still bound to old societal views and actions towards the elderly.  Our views belong to our mothers, to our grandmothers, and though we are the New Age Women, we still have Old Age views in many ways.  Remember that we Baby Boomer women grew up in the breaking free of old ways and we were still babies at breaking free of old ways of being and being looked at as subservient.  This subservience keeps us up at night, believe it or not.  We worry about being alone, unattached, and being able to do it all for ourselves.  Herein lies some of our worry about the future, our futures:  We are still tied to the ideology that we need to be taken care of.  

The wisdom of old age, I believe, comes from the epiphanies we have when we quiet the mind.  Sisters, we have gained a depth of experience that our mothers and grandmothers never faced.  Not worse, not better, but different.  Our strength has been honed by our experiences, if we have sought solutions rather than more problems.  We have gained Self-empowerment from our Past if we truly look at the whole of our lives rather than just moments when we were most vulnerable.  There was always more to it.  Our anxieties of the Past have no place in our lives any more.  Now we truly learn to put one foot in front of the other.  We cannot stay stuck in the mud of anxiety and isolation.  We need to interact with life, even more than we interacted with the problems of our lives that came before.  We are wise women.  We do not need to avoid life.  Life will happen whether we pretend/deny it doesn't.  We are wise women.  We are wise women.  I am a wise woman. I know 'stuff', you do too.  

Now, say that out loud: 

"I am a wise woman!"

©Carol Desjarlais 5.27.19

About the movie, Meet Joe Black:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119643/?ref_=tt_ch

The Jamaican Woman's Poignant Knowing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0aXbwnoQd0