Greener pastures at the winter of our lives

A friend of mine gleaned new insight from a Chinese proverb, devising one of her own. “After we have done the best that we can, sometimes we just have to sit and let the grass turn green by themselves,” she said.

It made me think: how can we keep our pastures green in the winter of our lives?

A holistic way to live is to assess and support our lives with the four pillars: physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. “Kabbalists say that the healthy person strives to integrate all four levels of his being.  Carl Jung speaks of this same quarternity when he attributes four functions to human personality: sensation, feeling, intellect and intuition,” according to Zalman Schacter-Shalomi.  

Physical

During the Golden Globes, we met Jane Fonda.  At 72, her face had some wrinkles but her smile exuded confidence, not just for her physical attributes, but for what's within. Part of Jane Fonda’s aliveness comes from exercising and physical movement. If you recall, she introduced us to leg lifts in the 80’s. When she met with Oprah, she said that life for her just keeps getting better. 

As a person exercises, aches and pains of disappear, and one's mobility enables him or her to cope with life's rigors. 

One morning, I walked up to the summit overlook in Baldwin Hills. I love the uphill walk as it is gradual and quite rewarding to see an almost complete circle view of LA’s skylines.  After that brisk walk, I helped chop down three of the six trunks of a bird of paradise. My husband, Enrique taught me how to use the chainsaw. After two hours of chopping and cutting, tired as I was, I gained a new reverence for my body which supported what I just did.  It also allowed me to continue my life review.

Emotional

Going through a major rite of passage, like a wedding in the family, brings compelling and catalytic life reviews. As any major family event, distant relatives dumped their projections on others. It created several life reviews.  For me, I turned to life events and considered what I felt were past mistakes and betrayals and the lessons I learned from them to refine my character.  Here is what I gained from doing this life review.

As the mother of the bride, I learned that as we go through pain, we also gain from it by opening our hearts and by creating larger communities focused on the use of creative energies. As we struggle, we discard those which failed, to make room for the new.  As we burn fires, the remaining ashes fertilize the soil and allow the grass to turn green once more.

It makes us realize how much inner strength we can muster when we face challenges head-on. 

It also makes us grateful to be surrounded by the beautiful inner spirits of our friends who keep the grass green, not only for themselves but for others as well.

It allows us to have a reservoir of patience and tolerance, so that as we advance in years, we do not simply ossify nor deteriorate. Instead, we stay as resilient as the swaying bamboo trees -- they keep growing new shoots even when chopped down.  

Spiritual 

Even if our concepts of God exist in different forms -- Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, God, Holy Spirit, the Goddess of the Universe, Anitos, Babaylan, the Indigenous Trees or Mother Earth --  all of them are instrumental in making us value life. And valuing our life is perhaps the highest respect we can provide for ourselves.  

Our faith also requires us to become aware of our strengths and limitations and to nurture the ability to cope with change. It calls us to choose love and forgiveness, instead of anger and resentment. It also makes us realize where true happiness comes from. It comes from having an irreplaceable love for God and from recognizing that we are God's beloved. 

When we keep these in mind, we are able to move forward.   

Intellectual

To keep the grass green requires changing one’s thinking. “By increasing someone’s consciousness, by bringing it into a new focus and breaking out of old patterns, you can alter aging," wrote Deepak Chopra in his book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind.  Schacter-Shalomi, in Ageing to Sageing, sees it as infusing one's mind with these questions: “What is my purpose on earth?, What is my relationship with the Higher Universe? How do you serve others using your God-given talents of perception, observation and self-expression? How do you share without engulfing or overwhelming the ‘other’?  How do you make room for others' expressions as well?"

According to Yes Magazine, Bhutan Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley spoke about using gross national happiness as a measure of progress, of which four strategies are involved: First, the promotion of sustainable and equitable socio-economic development; second, the conservation of fragile ecology -- they have since increased their green vegetation cover from below 60 to 72 %; third, the promotion of their culture; and fourth, good governance based on democracy.  

Of course, we can always choose to live the way we want to. But in the winter season of our lives, living with a positive outlook despite the challenges will enable us to have inner peace, happiness and joy!