Freedom in the Unknown

Posted on by KM Huber in Oneness

For a while I have been residing with two, well-worn nemeses, the past and the future.  I am deliberate in my use of the terms future and past rather than a specific moment, incident, or person for what keeps the past and future ever present is what Deepak Chopra calls “the conditioned response” or the known.

Each one of us has a myriad of conditioned responses for every situation that arises. Regardless of whether or not there is a replica of a particular situation, the mind enthusiastically emits a thought barrage of past experience and future possibility. Both future and past are attached to what happened or what might happen but not to the moment that is. Living in the moment is the unknown, free from past or future.

Essentially, every moment is free. We choose between the known and the unknown, between what we have always been and what we have never been. It is that basic. What is not free is the situation surrounding each and every moment.

Situations reside in the past or in the future–they have strings–and where there is attachment, there is ego, a constant chatter of what you already know. Only when we practice what Chopra calls “choice less awareness” (Moksha), are we in the unknown of the moment and truly free. It takes a lifetime of practice and ceaseless awareness.

For without awareness, we get comfortable and our practice becomes what we know and not what is. Increasingly, my enthusiasm was on the wane, whether for the revision of my novel or for my nonfiction manuscript on consciousness. While I love what I am doing, I could not deny a familiar tug of weariness. Briefly, even the malaise of lupus loomed as I turned more and more to the known of the past.

Mindless television is a tried-and-true response of mine to whenever “the world is too much with us” (William Wordsworth). Some would argue that I could not have picked a better time than the broadcasting of the two major political conventions in the United States. There may be something to that. For completely opposite reasons, both conventions made me weep but as I reached my saturation point for both weeping and politics, I discovered my enthusiasm for republic and democracy.  Both are messy, completely life-like, wherein lies the sliver that is hope.

No matter the moment of life, hope is always the light of the unknown and may be the heart of risk as well. In hope lies enthusiasm, the total immersion into life, “the ripple that follows the stone…[as] we are each faced with the endless and repeatable task of discovering or uncovering our enthusiasm, which means in essence being at one with the energy of God or the divine” (Mark Nepo). Not surprisingly, God and the divine are within the political whirlwind of the United States while the world watches.

Regardless of how we perceive our relationship to one another–Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” the Tao, the Universe, the Source or quantum physics–we are all connected to consciousness, which is so much more than a mere pinprick of light. Consciousness connects us to existence, transcending all we have ever known; it moves our heads under our hearts so we may hear one another. When we listen, we observe. We make a response within the moment.

In observing the political conventions I listened, dropping my decades-long conditioned response of ranting and raving. Rather, I was grateful for living in a republic brave enough to reveal the messiness of its democracy to the world, at considerable risk perhaps.  I immersed myself into the enthusiasm that is the noise of life, the unpredictable but eternal moment.

It is such a small step from the known to the unknown. In the unknown resides the “choice less” awareness that is the freedom inherent in risk, the heartbeat of hope. It is neither the past nor the future but only the moment, which is all we ever have yet is always more than enough as long as we are aware. “Despite our endless limitations, it seems that the qualities of attention, risk, and compassion allow us to be at one with the energy of the whole and the result is enthusiasm, that deep sensation of oneness” (Nepo).

(All Mark Nepo citations appear in The Book of Awakening)

The Long Goodbye

Posted on by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Cooper and EmmaRose

This past week has been one of goodbyes. As one goodbye piled upon another, I began to pay attention. I was reminded of a piece I wrote with another writer years ago called, “The Long Goodbye,” a wife’s farewell to her husband who lived more in the realm of Alzheimer’s and less in their sixty year marriage. For me, “The Long Goodbye” was always more about living than moving into another realm of existence.

Dudley

Nowhere is that truer than at an animal sanctuary where I’ve been a volunteer for the last four years. Mostly, I send out monthly updates to animal sponsors–it’s easy and fun–I relay stories and pictures of animal antics, always a welcome email. As the sanctuary is for elderly and medically needy animals, goodbye is often on the horizon. At times, goodbye is said so often it is hard to catch one’s breath.

In the past two days, three sanctuary residents crossed the Rainbow Bridge, one goodbye after another. Two of the residents were elderly canines, Snapper and Rocky, and the other was a very human-friendly rabbit, Dudley. For the remainder of their lives, the sanctuary provided them the security of home, a daily routine they came to trust. Lives regained. No matter how long or short their stay at the sanctuary, each of their lives ended in arms of love. Would that every one of us lived a life with such a long goodbye.

Cooper

As I have learned from Dr. Mac and the residents of the sanctuary, the long goodbye is unique to each and every being. On the very morning the long goodbyes played out at the sanctuary, Cooper reminded me the  moment looms for us as well.  Like his friends at the sanctuary, Cooper lives in the moment, devoted to routine. For now, he is still willing to accommodate the physical changes his body is undergoing but he will let me know when the end of the long goodbye is here. There won’t be much notice, just enough. Until then, we go on as if life has always been this way, and after a while, we believe what we tell ourselves.

For some time, Cooper and I have been witnessing a long goodbye between a woman and a canine that live in our apartment complex. Alice has Alzheimer’s and her hair is white just like Buddy’s, her West Highland Terrier. In the two years we’ve known them, the two have been the best of friends but for a while now, Alice hasn’t been able to remember their routine. While Buddy does his best to remind Alice, Alice remembers routines with other Westies. Buddy does his best to keep up.

Snapper

We learned that Alice and Buddy are moving, and while we know it’s a fact, the actual date is never mentioned. At first, Alice told us that all of her sons were moving as well and the whole family would be living in the same state. First it was Colorado and then it was Connecticut but now the most frequent moving destination is an assisted living center in a small Florida town not too far away from us.

Of course, none of these moves involve Buddy living with Alice anymore. Alice’s sons have dogs of their own, and they seem genuinely fond of Buddy and he of them. He is a fairly young dog, smart, but he has had to fend for himself a lot lately, and he is not as trusting as he once was. Buddy and Alice have done the best they can for each other but the change they face may not involve a long goodbye, at least with one another.

Rocky

I am reminded that the long goodbye is not a guarantee but a gift as I re-read the sponsor updates of Snapper with her tennis balls, of Rocky’s kiddie pool antics and his chomping at the hose water trying to fill his pool. Even little Dudley felt safe again after what seemed a hopeless situation. I cannot know what will be for Alice and Buddy but the long goodbye is often the reward of a life regained.

(AWARDS: Recently, this blog received some awards exchanged among bloggers, and I am humbled. Thank you, fellow bloggers. It is a true honor to have one’s work appreciated by one’s peers.)

The Quiet Teachers

Posted on by KM Huber in Oneness, Writing

As I have mentioned more than once, I’m spending this year with Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening, meaning that I begin my daily meditation by reading one of his 365 observations. More often than not, a series of readings—one day after another—will seem an awakening designed only for me. This past week, Nepo introduced me to the quiet teachers.

The quiet teachers are often ignored but are everywhere and are as solid as the ground upon which we walk. We know these quiet teachers by their “lessons [that] dissolve as accidents or coincidence…offering us direction that can only be heard in the roots of how we feel and think” (Nepo).

For me, the lessons have been clear but somewhat noisy for I am in the process of completely restructuring a novel I wrote seventeen years ago. What that means is the destruction of a weakly structured novel in order to salvage a stubborn story that has waited a long time to be told. It has required me to immerse myself into an old world, awakening characters long silent and provoking images fraught with memories. There has been much shattering of ideals but the shards of those ideals proved to be quiet teachers, the first of others that I met this week.

Nepo also introduced me to an observation from Megan Scribner: “‘I’m only lost if I’m going someplace in particular.'” I could not have described my own first attempt at writing a novel more succinctly. For over 80,000 words and seventeen years, I stayed with a story I no longer believed rather than facing the story that was trying to emerge. Once I began stripping away the façade, I heard the heart of the story and found myself at journey’s beginning: “Practice letting go of your plan and discover the path of interest that waits beneath your plan” (Nepo).

Not being attached to outcome or plan reveals the story waiting to be written. It is only when I have the courage to face failure do I heed the lessons of the quiet teachers. Accident and coincidence dissolve into the direction of the story. I am struck by the synchronicity of my own life’s direction with that of my writing life. Not for the last time, I am in awe at the oneness that is all.

“‘Be serene in the oneness of things and erroneous views will disappear by themselves'” (Seng-Ts’an) became clearer and clearer to me as I separated the heart of the story from the remnants of what was once a novel. All of the tearing apart and leaving of words is less difficult than I imagine. There are thorny moments but eventually, they give way to the relief of no longer having to hold up the façade of novel.

While the shininess of a new structure of a novel is a gift, the fear of idolizing structure at the cost of story, wherever it may wend, is a battle that will wage until structure and story support one another as a whole. I am confident in the lessons of the quiet teachers but mostly, I am vigilant for like life, writing is fraught with accident and coincidence as is the beating of my heart.

“As you enter your day, try not to reach for life. Try not to leave or arrive. Try to let life into you” (Nepo).

Gifts at 60

Posted on by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Cooper and EmmaRose

On this first day of my being 60, I am not writing the blog post I had planned; living in the moment is like that or so I am learning. Certainly, I thought about this particular post much more than I usually do—I kept considering it my first blog post of my next decade–but by mid-week, that ego balloon went airless.

The last week of my fifth decade proved to be a week of surprises, mostly in the form of sugar, but not entirely in the obvious way. For the most part, my system no longer tolerates sugar in any form other than what it produces itself. Generally, this is not a statement I have to consider but in my last post, I mentioned that I had an appointment with a practitioner of Eastern medicine. Not so surprisingly, she and I had different interpretations regarding Eastern medicine–and sugar–but rather surprisingly, I agreed to try two different remedies at least one time, which proved to be more than enough.

Buoyed by the possibilities presented by the practitioner, I decided to have one (1) glass of red wine, my first in three years.  Although my glass of wine and my dose of “remedies” were days apart, literally, my week collapsed before Wednesday noon. I am more recovered than not and leaning toward awareness.

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I suspect I was caught up in birthday bliss for it has been a week of gifts beyond remembering the lesson of sugar.  Once again, I discovered that I really can, and should, trust my instincts and not my ego. It was not my instincts that chose the remedies or the wine but my ego filled with the idea of birthday, a balloon born to burst. I am reminded of Georgia O’Keeffe–“To see takes time”–a sentence for the rest of my life, yet another gift.

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I was pleasantly surprised by lovely flowers from  Dr. Mac and all of the sanctuary “critters” at  secondchancefarms.org. As you can see, EmmaRose wasted no time in her inspection, and yes, all are “kitty safe” petals.

Cooper and I began our morning on the Gulf of Mexico, near this palm tree at St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge but here is where we will both end our day.

Almost always, Cooper takes command of the remote. Like me, he is a bit ambivalent about television but he has a preference for the remote.

Thank you, Dear Reader, for stopping by to read my posts and to chat, from time to time. It is such a gift you give, and I am most grateful, always.

“Once during the day, think of who you are as living energy and not as a goal to be achieved or obstacle to be overcome. Feel yourself without inventory” (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening).

Final Days of 59

Posted on by KM Huber in Lupus, ROW in 80 Days, Writing

“… Transformation always involves the falling away of things we have relied on, and we are left with the feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end, because it is” (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening).

This past February, I wrote a post about some unexpected milestones at age 59 ½. At the time, I was struck by the synchronicity. Still am. As this is my final week at age 59, I decided to revisit those milestones before I step into my sixth decade, one that promises even more transformation.

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I have continued to lose weight beyond the 59 ½ pounds of February; I am down 69 pounds with another fifteen-twenty to lose but no more than that. My eating habits have not changed in the past six months but my taste buds have adjusted to other options, and I enjoy eating again. I found millet-buckwheat bread made with chicory root and without refined starch, absolutely critical for me.  Almond butter sandwiches are now a staple. While my future remains gluten, yeast, sugar, dairy and soy free, my grocery list items are crisp and fresh.

In my last week as a fifty-nine-year-old, I am in better health than I was at 58, sans an arsenal of allopathic medicine. I remain convinced that Eastern medicine– Ayurveda and Chinese–has a better understanding of autoimmune disease. Ted J. Kaptchuk’s The Web That Has No Weaver is an excellent overview of traditional Chinese medicine, and I am searching for a similar Ayurveda text. Until I find it, I am enjoying Deepak Chopra’s Perfect Health, an informative volume regarding Ayurveda traditions.  This Tuesday, I have my first meeting with a practitioner of Eastern medicine.

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But in these final days of my 59th year, it is my writing that is undergoing the greatest transformation. My numbers alone are major personal milestones.  I no longer publish blog posts twice a week as I did in February but on June 2, I began writing the initial draft of a nonfiction manuscript. Currently, I am producing over 9200 words per week on this manuscript alone. At my 59 ½ milestone, my word count was 9800 words for the entire month of February.

While I do not write for a specific word or page count, numbers gauge a manuscript’s size so I knew the end of the nonfiction manuscript was close: currently, it is 330 pages or just over 91,000 words. But even before I tallied the numbers, synchronicity had come to call; what Deepak Chopra calls “a quantum leap of creativity…a relinquishing of the known for the unknown.” And like milestones, coincidence comes wrapped in the ordinary.

In February, I included my participation in ROW 80 as part of my regular blog posts.  Frequently, I discussed the initial draft of a novel that I wrote seventeen years ago; in some blog posts I’d opt for rewriting the novel and in other posts I’d refer to the novel as a life once lived. Rather than letting go, I was very like the speaker in Linda Pastan’s poem, “Ethics,” unable to decide whether to save the old woman or the painting.

So, I signed up for an online workshop, Conflict and Idea with Bob Mayer, and learned about “kernel idea.” I have not been the same since so I consider it my toehold in the unknown, a piece of a milestone.

Bob says that the kernel idea is what initially inspires the writing of a novel–it is the Alpha and Omega of a book–it starts and completes the creative process but here is the key point: the story that you write may and probably does change but the kernel idea of a book does not, ever.

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During the course of the workshop, I came to understand that the “kernel idea” for my novel was not the story I had written. The kernel idea had not changed but the story I wrote moved away from the idea within the first 100 pages. Finally, I realized what I was hanging onto for seventeen years—my kernel idea and 100 pages—yet, it took me a while to understand just what that might mean but when I did, it felt like a “quantum leap of creativity.” Still does.

Thus, as I started writing a new nonfiction book—my current manuscript–I discovered the way to tell the story of my original kernel idea. Maybe the years sorted themselves, maybe I was letting go of what no longer serves but with transformation there is also revelation. In letting  go of a seventeen-year-old-story that no longer served, I discovered the kernel idea for a new nonfiction book.

“When faced with great change—in self, in relationship, in our sense of calling–we somehow must take in all that has enclosed, nurtured and incubated us so when the new life is upon us, the old is within us” (Nepo).

Waverly Mornings

Posted on by KM Huber in Cooper and EmmaRose

Since early spring of this year, Cooper and I have been spending mornings at Waverly Park. Almost as soon as we started, Cooper needed a ramp for our just-after-sunrise strolls. We settled into the ramp and Waverly mornings as the way we began our days.

Summer has seemed nearly perfect for us or maybe it just seems that way because of Waverly. The thick carpet of grass, rich with dew, anticipates the heat of the day while the still waters of Waverly Pond mirror the day’s possibilities, an idyllic frame for every summer’s day.

We don’t have a usual path through the park that surrounds Waverly Pond, although we are partial to an initial stroll among the pines and dogwood. We weave in and out and among the mosaic mulch of pine straw and leaves long fallen. Shoots of coarse grass serve as sentinels for the forest bed.

Almost every morning we follow the arc of shade to a ring of crape myrtles–white and watermelon when in bloom—they are the gateway to a canopy of live oaks, primeval in their presence. The circular, gray-gravel path beneath the canopy of limbs winds round magnolia trees too young to know their first blossom. Who knows their promise?

Some mornings, we cross the bridge that holds the world away from Waverly.  I watch the waters for turtles and fish–they  surface more often than not–always, I wave in friendship. Cooper explores the bridge for the scent of those who have come before. He has taught me that no two crossings are ever the same. 

On those mornings that we cross the bridge, we never sit at the gazebo for there is much to explore. These are mornings when Cooper’s legs are working as we both remember them, without one wobble.  We admire the scent of the rose bushes but Cooper keeps his nose much closer to the ground, examining the gazebo full circle. Soon, I am given to looking out on the pond.

The turtle row launch is generally busy, negotiating space for incoming and outgoing, big or small. On less crowded mornings, a lone egret will land but the concrete of the launch is not as inviting as the verdant growth along the shores of Waverly pond, even in August. There is much to be discovered as the day begins.

I am grateful to Cooper for these Waverly mornings for it is his heart that holds us fast to our ritual. He has taught me the forever joy of “bye-bye in the car.” It is a lifetime gift, of course. Already there are times that we must settle for the memory of Waverly but for every day we are able, we have a Waverly morning. 

In the Gap

Posted on by KM Huber in Lupus, Oneness

It is not exaggeration that for almost 60 years I have been a woman who lived outside of herself, meaning whatever I could not “fix” I suppressed, as if a reckoning would never come but, of course, it did.  Fiscally, physically, and spiritually bankrupt, life as I had known it ended, which really was a good thing.

It did mean I had to “go wild into my life” but as freeing as that is, it is not without its pitfalls. The discovery of my story revealed a raw power but knowing my story is only freeing if I am not attached to its outcome. If I am, I am doomed to repeat my own history. I am not without my moments of reliving past behavior but they are fewer.

Two weeks ago, I began accessing what Deepak Chopra calls the “gap between our thoughts” through meditation. Chopra says that in meditation, we access our baseline state of consciousness, in essence where we began. For years, I have touted meditation while my actual practice of it was not an actuality. When the Chopra Center offered a free, 21 day meditation challenge, I was not without my skepticism yet I knew I was ready to begin meditation.

No doubt that makes a difference but I am amazed at what meditation has provided me over these past two weeks. They have not been easy weeks for my lupus has been quite active but meditation has provided me another way to be with lupus. In accessing the gap between my thoughts, I am in the stillness, where my physical body connects with my consciousness.

“In the gap” is a tempting place to stay but the pull of physical existence is stronger. For me, meditation is not a ‘60s “trip” nor am I in some sort of trance. I am, however, in a place where my physical presence is lighter. Upon my return–and this happens every time–there is a physiological change in me, a release of tension that pervades my life more and more. Whatever physical discomfort I have been feeling, it is less.

Here’s what I think is happening: my pain is less because more and more I accept it as a part of my physical presence. I do not know that I have ever accepted lupus or any of the other names my dis-ease has accumulated. While it is taking me some time to realize fully that acceptance, the coincidence of reading Cheryl Strayed’s book as I began meditating with the Chopra Center is not lost on me. Both are tools for releasing the past and accepting what is by choosing to be present in each moment. When I am, there is a physiological change in me.

After 35 years of chronic illness, I am surprised but I also know that when I went knocking on the doors of the ancient traditions this time, I surrendered. That is an admission I never thought I would make much less post on the Internet but in accepting all of my story, lupus included, I surrendered to all I have been and all I have done, freeing me from the responses I have always made.

When I am present, the physiology of my body responds differently. I am not pulling from the past or tugging from the future for a response. My moment is not attached to any past baggage or any future “what ifs.” Situations are not free but my response to any of them, including lupus, is.

Being present is to reside in the unknown, “where the wild things are,” where creativity connects with consciousness. It takes practice, requires patience, its paths are many yet the moment is all we ever have, and it is enough.

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Another Stray

Posted on by KM Huber in Oneness, Writing

What if going into the wild is the way home? What if a wilderness journey awaits each one of us? The wilderness is the unknown, rarely appreciated and while sometimes faced, the wilderness is flush with fear. Yet, where “the wild things are” is where the infinite possibilities are for in the wilderness we bear what we believe we cannot bear.

When Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995, she was “on a spiritual quest but what [she] got was a physical test.”* Before her 1100 mile trek, Strayed was not even a novice backpacker–she had never carried a backpack—thus, she seriously compromised herself in her selection of equipment and gear, especially her boots. She was not physically prepared or emotionally fit, and beyond her food supplies, she had almost no money. What she did have was unfailing support from her fear of failing. In other words, the wilderness provided—perhaps only as it can—for “the physical realm kept delivering the spirit to [her].”

Strayed’s writing is raw in the revealing of herself at twenty-two years old. Through Strayed, we see what masters we are at masking our fears, and how the wilderness will break us open if we are willing to replay the stories that are our lives. For 1100 miles, Cheryl Strayed revisits her life, comforted only by the constant pain of surviving each day, sometimes only step by step. She says, she “went wild into [her] life.”

Wild is a call to our own wilderness, a call to exploration of all that we are. For Strayed, it was an arduous trek through the high country of California and Oregon but Wild is more than that. If we go “wild” into our lives, we discover the rawness in our past not to relive but to observe the stories that are no more. What was then is not now, and it is a crucial distinction for once we discover it, we have found our own Pacific Crest Trail, a walk that will not be painless.

In the wilderness, we are not what we have been; what we are is in the moment. Physical existence in the wilderness depends on being completely present every moment. Each wilderness has its own miles, its own beasts, and no two journeys are the same, although paths do cross.

We come to recognize that we do want to know what is around the bend and over the mountain. Climbing rocks, stomping through snow, and trying to find water–literally or figuratively– may bring us to the edge of our existence but if we lean into each experience, we see through the fear and accept the pain. We may find places within the wilderness to stay forever but until we’ve walked our wilderness, we can only stop for a while.

We nudge ourselves along until we hit our stride—we just notice it one day–we recognize how our physical being strives to meet our spirit.  In facing fear, we clear a path through our wilderness because “being fearless is not being unafraid.”

Unknown is the nature of the wild–we are not tomorrow what we are today–such are the fields of possibilities in the wilderness. If we immerse ourselves in those fields—in as many possibilities as we can—we will travel less in what used to be and live more in what is.

That is what Cheryl Strayed’s book has given me, my own wild. For the last two years, I have been on a voyage in but until I read Wild, I did not lean into the pain as acceptance. Like Strayed, I am ill-equipped and utterly naïve in my quest; like Strayed, I am the cause of my own physical and emotional pain; like Strayed, I insist on learning the hard way.

Unlike Strayed, I was 58 years old when I began and have not yet walked all the miles of my wilderness but I have hit my stride. For the rest of my journey, the pages of Wild burn in my memory.

*All Cheryl Strayed quotes are from the Super Soul Sunday Interview with Oprah Winfrey, July 22, 2012.

Patience is…

Posted on by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Oneness

…second to simplicity, according to sage Lao-tzu, sixth century B.C. author of the Tao Te Ching (Tao). Some sources cite the Tao as the second most translated work in history, preceded only by the Bible. As always, second place may or may not impress but what is impressive is that each of the Tao’s 81 sections (or 5000 Chinese characters) provides us with the constant contradictions inherent in life and then, most generously, offers us strategies within the Tao’s three central teachings–simplicity, patience, and compassion—for every moment we live.

That simplicity precedes patience is not difficult to appreciate. Before we can be, we must separate the strands of our life, acknowledging each strand unto itself as well as its relationship to every other strand. Patience emerges from the untangling but “the place of waiting is always trying and very difficult to live out…fear wants us to act too soon…patience, hard as it is, helps us outlast our preconceptions” (Mark Nepo).

If we practice patience rather than relying on a conditioned response—that which we have always known or done—our perception of what is possible changes completely. Within patience, the moment is fresh and free as in Moksha, a Sanskrit word meaning freedom or release. Deepak Chopra has referred to Moksha as “choiceless awareness,” in which the moment is emotionally free from the situation surrounding it.

In the freedom of Moksha, every moment is free because it is now, completely and fully present. Just as the strands separate to reveal simplicity, in Moksha, the present moment is removed from any future or past situation. The moment is free of any complication, of any condition. The moment is.

Like the moment, how we respond is free and fresh, separate from any situation that has established itself in the past or in the future. As long as we are completely present, we are as emotionally free as the moment. Essentially, we are not attached to the situation’s outcome– a central tenet of Buddhism—as yet another ancient tradition reveals itself within the practice of patience.

Yes, I am weaving in and out of the Vedas of Hinduism and the Tao of Taoism along with the Zen of Buddhism, an intricate weave of no beginning and no end. Continuously, I am startled by similarities—as if I were following the strands of the weave for the first time rather than following a familiar pattern—there is such crispness, freshness to this wondrous weave’s undulating eternity. There is such life in these traditions and thus, freedom.

Yet, the moments from my previous meandering among these traditions show themselves from time to time. There is unraveling yet to be done but the strands sort themselves as only memory can. It takes time but I wait for I know every moment I have is free as long as I have patience. It is rarely easy but with practice, patience increases.

“… When feeling urgent to find your place on this Earth…wait…and things as you fear them will, more often than not, shrink into the hard irreplaceable beauty of things as they are…of which you have no choice but to be a part” (Nepo).

And buried therein are the seeds of compassion.

(All Mark Nepo quotations are from The Book of Awakening) 

Life at Sixty

Posted on by KM Huber in Writing

I had been dreading the evening when I would no longer have May Sarton’s The Education of Harriet Hatfield to read. Yet, as is often true with the really fine writers, Sarton pushed me along, knowing it was time for another book, another story.

I want to tell you about Harriet Hatfield.

The novel opens at the death of Harriet’s partner. It is the late 1980s in an exclusive, upper-class neighborhood in Boston—Chestnut Hill–where Harriet and her partner had lived for thirty years. It is not a novel in which a great deal happens but, of course, a great deal does happen to a sixty-year-old lesbian who has an opportunity to begin life completely anew. With the money she inherits from her partner’s estate, Harriet moves from Chestnut Hill to a working-class neighborhood where she opens a feminist bookstore that also serves as  her residence.

Harriet soon learns that hatred and prejudice run roughshod over any sense of security she may have once had. The anonymous but ominous threats Harriet receives do not weaken her resolve but strengthen her determination to stay in a neighborhood that does not want a “lady” lesbian or her feminist–and therefore must be pornographic–bookstore, Hatfield House.

Harriet Hatfield’s feminism is a belief in equality for all in all things–jobs, housing, existence–and is a constant source of tension throughout the novel. Hatfield House, with its overstuffed chairs and afternoon teas, is “‘the equivalent these days of men’s clubs…places where women can talk to each other, find sustenance, and come to some idea of who they really are.'” Yet, Hatfield House is much more. It is, perhaps, a “bridge” to and for all in Harriet’s neighborhood–including hate and prejudice–but as Harriet says of metaphor, “‘if you run it into the ground… it suddenly doesn’t quite work.'”

I was introduced to The Education of Harriet Hatfield on Cynthia Newberry Martin’s blog . While I am familiar with most of Sarton’s work, I was not aware of this novel but I was aware of a bit of a coincidence, being a sixty-year-old lesbian myself. Like Harriet, I, too, believe that at sixty I have been given a rare opportunity to live a life I have never lived. Unlike Harriet, I am anything but financially secure–her complete opposite financially–but I am rich in ways that continue to surprise me every day, which is so very like Harriet. One of the greatest perks of growing old is finally appreciating all that one is and how little, how very little is necessary to live a life fulfilled.

“‘I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion.
These are your greatest treasures.
Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.'”
–Lao-Tzu (Translation provided in The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo)

Above all, Harriet Hatfield has patience. She does not believe that all of her neighbors will accept her or her bookstore even eventually–she knows she will not outlive prejudice–the temporary truce in the neighborhood is indirectly provided by her dog, Patapouf: “‘there is a residue of compassion… that suddenly comes into view where an animal is concerned, as though the only pure thing left in this corrupt, hate filled world is the love of animals.'” The neighborhood belief that animals are beyond prejudice provides a brief respite as well as some consideration for what another human being may or may not be, even a lesbian.

This is a novel in which not a lot happens and in which everything happens. It is not a novel about understanding one side or the other much less taking sides. It is a novel about living one’s life fully and completely every day–whatever is presented–even if it is a new life at sixty.

“…Given enough time, most of our enemies cease to be enemies, because waiting allows us to see ourselves in them. Patience devastates us with the truth that, in essence, when we fear another, we fear ourselves; when we distrust another, we distrust ourselves; when we kill another, we kill ourselves”
(The Book of Awakening).

(All quotations from May Sarton’s The Education of Harriet Hatfield are from the 1989 Norton edition.)