Ann Moir-BussyAs 2024 flows into 2025, so too we continue our journey of growing and ageing. I love the way Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to older women as the “Seer of other realities”. And for me, this is the aim or goal for the days ahead – to open up to a way of being wherein we see things more clearly, and able to live more fully the reality of who we are called to be.
As we grow older, society will have us think that we are diminishing, but actually a better picture of what it means to be in the flowering of old age is that we are now rich – a conglomeration of all our older selves. Things that were once black and white are now full of colour, and things that were once straight are now bent. Elders are rather like mountains, and they can’t fit into a tiny shoe box anymore. Yet culture wants us to continue to shrink into a small box and not be seen or heard.
Challenges
Our loyal body does face challenges. There are changes in relationships and some of those special friends of our own generation we have known have left this planet before us. There is a bereavement felt, and we know we must step into the breach left and be the elder. Collective society tends to see us as diminished, unable to deliver anything of use, but our challenge is to be more creative and unleash creative fires.
Sadly, today’s culture wants to take that away. They make money by fear-mongering. “You’re old, you need this gadget and that gadget to help you cope otherwise you can’t think straight or walk straight.” Again, our money making and marketing society want to profit out of us becoming older.
So much comes to us now, not from our own internal source of wisdom but from those who want to proselytize us. Those who want us to live in fear of the day that such and such will happen. Yes, we do need to plan and prepare for what we need to do. But then let it be, be an elder, not live in fear. We need to create safe sacred space for elders where they can be themselves. We must not be drawn into something that is not the blossoming of old age but only a peripheral idea.
Most elders do not fear death – rather they fear not being loved, not being understood and not being cared about. The fear of not being able to love, to fulfil our calling, not being able to unleash our creative fire, not saying or doing what needs to be said to help the world. We might be an old tree, but we can still blossom.
So let us leave the collective voice and open up to what is before us. Do not be diminished – we’ve had diminishment from the day we were born. On to say it in another say, “Stop scratching around with the turkeys and fly like an eagle”.
Seeing other realities
If we want to open our eyes to see other realities, and to have someone hear us or know us or be interested in us, we need to remember the old proverb – that the wind causes a man to draw his coat closer and the sun causes a man to take his coat off. The “coat” is understood as the person’s mind – their perspective, and the way they think as the paradigm – they are thinking according to the spirit of the times they are in, and if you try to blow them apart, like the wind, it will create anger, and they will become resistant and stormy within themself. Hence holding their coat closer, closing their mind.
As an elder or teacher, our role must be like the sun and warm them, inflame them with new thoughts and passions so they will take off their old mind and find what is useful for them. In other words, our task is to help them change their perspective, see a different reality, so they feel nourished.
The elders medicine box and strings of tangled necklaces.
We need to remember there is never one solution, otherwise we become trapped – we need a full chest of medicines and to use our intuition and insight consciously. Have you ever met people for whom nothing is ever pleasing? The food isn’t right, clothes are not right, people don’t act right. Or in addition to complaining you hear that nothing will ever change – “I have no control over it – I’m their victim”. It’s sad, isn’t it, when we meet people who feel like this, who feel they have to capitulate or take what is offered? And even sadder is that their creative life is shut down. They feel they have no solutions.
Sometimes people are so stuck, feeling that nothing can ever be different. And such irritation as above, sucks the life out of a person’s bones and neurology.
Have you ever tried to untangle necklaces and chains that are tied together? The more you pull, the worse the tangle gets. The psyche can get tangled too, and we have to help people move slowly and gently if we are to enable them to untangle the years of clouded perspective, rigid thinking.
The Elder’s Task
So first, we must leave the collective way of thinking, move apart from pleasing others or do what society demands we should do or should be like because we are older. We must not allow our creativity to be silenced or diminished. There isn’t the space in this column to unravel a fairy tale that shows us just how to do this, so I would like to offer you a chance to join me on zoom for a special session, where through story and images we can gain deeper insights into the urgent task for us as elders and as we become “seers of other realities”.
Join Ann on Sat the 18th Jan, 11 am Victorian time for a FREE hour talk on, ‘Women elders – Seers of other realities: Learning from the story of Rumplestiltskin.‘
Register HERE
Check out and join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fabulous50s
And if you would like to contact Ann: ann@annmoirbussy.com.au
Barbara Brewster
Davina Herbert
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