You may have noticed in the earlier posts that Mind, Body and Spirit have a kind of porous way of bleeding into each other. If you aren’t trying to lock one part of yourself out of your life, you may have recognized that the same thing happens in your life and body. By locking out, I mean, for example, if you’re a student and love books and studying but don’t exercise and take care of your body, then an imbalance is created. The same as with being all about the body and not enriching the mind and spirit. They’re connected. Together they form the whole of who you are. Most of us lean more one way than the other. The discipline is to bring in a soupçon at least of the others to bring some flavor to our life.
This triad of Mind, Body, and Spirit goes back into history and prehistory in different forms. More immediately in the Christian tradition, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Celts looked to Land, Sea, and Sky and beyond that to Maiden, Mother, and Crone. In some strange way these all connect in a very similar way. I don’t find that negates any of them, but rather see it as mystery and a testament to who we are. Excuse me for going into that long explanation. It exposes my love of research and my interest in the Mind, Body, Spirit connection.
In the previous blog on Mind, I mentioned that several words have just kept popping up this summer. Vulnerability was one of the words. Why is it important for any age and to aging? Vulnerability exposes our weaknesses and it exposes our character faults. Or maybe I should say – what we see as faults. Are we willing to admit to imperfections? It can expose the things we’re ashamed of in other words. Along with vulnerability comes a kind of fear.
I didn’t learn this on my own, though I certainly have a lot of those vulnerabilities. My reading group read Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly this summer. It was originally published in 2012, so it’s not new; but it’s oh, so relevant to those of us at an older age and to those who are younger, and to these times.
A child going off to their first day of kindergarten, a teen to their first day of high school or college have many of the same vulnerabilities as a parent with a new baby, or an older person trying to find their way after retirement. I didn’t know what the next move should be, so I cleared and cleaned house for three months. The fears may grow more involved and burdensome as we age, but life is a progression. We’re not young and suddenly old.
Aging produces a whole list of vulnerabilities and vulnerable reactions. There are those who don’t hear well and don’t want to admit it and can’t or don’t get help with it. The reaction is often to isolate or slowly lose contact with others. There is loss of confidence over our appearance. There is loss of confidence in the responses of our body from bad knees and bad balance to wobbly hearts. There is a subtle lack of confidence in our strength when out and about that begins to limit what we do and where we go. We are vulnerable.
Still, vulnerabilities don’t just belong to the old. They belong to the young and untried, to the sick, and sometimes to someone just out on their own in a foreign country or location. I’m not parroting Brene Brown here, though I recommend her book. Any of you reading this probably recognize yourself somewhere in the list or it strikes a chord that resonates for you or someone you know.
Our Adult Class at church recently discussed aging. I was, of course, very interested in the comments from everyone. One person mentioned being an older sister and “fixer.” I could relate to that. I am oldest in my family and tend to want to come up with a fix for everyone. As she said, and I can completely relate to it – I don’t feel like I can fix everything anymore. A family member said something similar recently – that synchronicity I mentioned last week. I do think curing ourselves of our vulnerabilities might go a long way toward “fixing” a lot.
Since I can’t “fix” much, I hope to leave you with materials, links to good material, and the names of good books in the course of these blogs. Not all will appeal to everyone, but I hope some of them do. You have the option of following the links. So here I’m connecting the link to Brene Brown’s Ted Talk. I understand that it was one of the top five most watched Ted Talks of all time. She is a good and entertaining speaker.