Having Been

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash

By Andrea Lingle

So, you walked your yellow brick road all the way to Oz and found, as expected, that the only thing at the end of the sidewalk was a place to turn around. The spool of your life has scant few revolutions left—behind you are all of your embroidered years, some tidy and picturesque and others knotted and unintelligible. This is the end of what is known, and, as far as we know, this is the one life you will get to live. The final stage of life is characterized by Erik Erikson as Integrity vs Despair. How, in the winter of life, will you regard the past summers, and how will you prepare for the spring that will not come for you?

How will you contend with having been?

Turns out the final epoch of life is not spent counting the number of symphonies you composed or deals you brokered. It’s about embracing the sacredness of life: the ultimate wonder of participation. Every word you spoke was not profound or even kind. Many of them were probably wasted in complaining or drivel. You probably missed many opportunities to smile at a stranger or accept help from a neighbor. Certainly you could have stewarded your resources with more of an eye to the good of the community. Probably your five-year-old self would not recognize what you became when you grew up. Is that really all you did? Were all those compromises necessary? Did you really never go to the moon?

No, the book did not sell like you hoped. No you didn’t solve even one global problem. No, you could not stop life from pulverizing your cherished ones.

Yes, life is disappointing.

Disappointment is sacred when we put down the red pen. Not because we have succumbed to nihilism, but because getting it all perfect wouldn’t mitigate disappointment. Matthew 5:48 implies that Jesus wanted his followers to aim for perfection, but what kind of perfection? The kind exhibited by the God that built a paradise that needed a little something after all. Adam needing Eve is a story about, among lots of other things, a continually creative God. The kind of Creator who sparks a universe that is accelerating outward. This is a messy, intricate, changing, chaotic place, and it emanates from the breast of Love. And love is risky and messy and, often, imperfect.

Wabi sabi is a Japanese mindset celebrating the beauty in the mended dish, the weedy garden, the good-enoughness of the non-superlative life. There is great beauty in the purity of satisfaction with what is.

From a mountain temple
the sound of a bell struck fumblingly
vanishes in the mist

Yosano Buson

I love Wabi Sabi. It is not a license to give up. It is the melancholy of trying while knowing you are a temporary assembly of matter stumbling through a one-act play with no rehearsal. The joy of life is not having reached the end without a typo or foible, it is softening into the Divine Embrace and feeling the tickle of a whisper on your age-deafened ear.

"Thank you for walking with me.”