Turning 60, Becoming Calm

 I've really calmed down.  Not completely, but quite a bit. I'm less agitated.  That's what I enjoy the most about turning 60.

This calming down applies to many parts of my life, most importantly, my marriage. Our home is a much happier and peaceful place since I quit hassling the Deke about anything.  We are easy on each other.  We don't boss each other around.  We don't question one another's intentions.  We don't expect each other to be doing any better than how we are doing.  We don't get upset if one of us changes her/his mind or shows up late or comes home later than planned.  We are calm with each other.  We are lenient.  As I've done previously in blog posts, I'll quote from Gerald Stern's poem, "Her Right Catches the Lavendar":  "Why did it take so long/ for me to get lenient?"  Maybe it took a while, but is it ever contributing to the calm and trust in our household.  Actually, now that I think about it, The Deke and I are sort of like improvisational actor.  We say, "Yes, and" (or something like it).  We add new information. We don't block each other. We play in the present and use the moment. We are open to change, change, change.  


When I'm home with my mom, like now, I've calmed down.  I accept what she says she wants done and do it.  I try to be lenient.  Within myself, I don't always agree with what she wants done, but, as I turn 60, I've finally come to learn that I don't have the ability or the will to try to change how she does things.  Mom bosses me around and gives me a lot of instructions.  She's anxious.  It's as if things won't get done right without her intervention.  It's a small thing.  It's not causing harm.  Nonetheless, I've had to calm down about this, accept it, and just focus on getting things done to be of help.  Since I've calmed down, things have been easier with Mom when I visit her.  I wish I'd learned this a long time ago, but I think it's good that I've learned it by now. 

One of the reasons I retired was that I sensed felt an increase in pressure as to how I should do my job from those who administer my work, locally, at the state level, and at the national level.  On the one hand, deeper trust has developed between me and Deke as I have quit pressing her about things.  On the other hand, being pressed about things at my work left me with the sense that I wasn't trusted to do my work.  Granted, no one came after me individually about my work.  In fact, I think my work as an instructor has been and is trusted.

But in a more collective sense, as the member of a department, certain developments and pressures from outside our department were pressed upon us and I began to sense that we weren't being trusted to do our work without increased oversight and increased uniformity or standardization of our work.  I was feeling pressure that composition classes should be more like each other rather than reflecting the diverse ways that diverse instructors approach things.

I stepped away, I retired, and it helped calm me.  Over the last year and a half of part-time work in my retirement, I've been rested, free of the anxiety caused by matters outside of the classroom.  I do all I can to preserve this calm in my part-time work as a retiree.  In particular, I keep myself absolutely in the dark, absolutely ignorant about the difficulties occurring in the department I retired from.  I've succeeded.  I walk away from conversations about these difficulties and refuse to be a part of conversations about what's at issue or where friends of mine stand. It helps keep me free from the politics of LCC and free from gossip and this keeps me calm.

I am the same way at church.  I stay away from the governing of our parish.  I enjoy the fellowship of parishioners I disagree with and I don't want our relationships defined by our differences. I've seen too many churches become divided on matters of  "principle" or "values", where differences which, in the long run, are meaningless and marginal, become the center of concern and are endowed with more meaning than they deserve. Division results. So does mutiny.  Church politics don't interest me.  Staying clear of them helps me stay calm.
I'm not 100% averse to conflict.  I simply try to stay away from conflict that I find petty or personal.  I will take part in conflict that involves things that I think matter a lot in the long run.  But, I don't thrive on conflict, nor do I thrive on knowing about conflicts between people I have worked with or people with whom I worship.  (It's the same when I'm in a play.  I steer clear of petty conflicts that surface between members of any cast.)

I can see now, at age 60, that my sense of calm really goes back to what I learned when I worked on my failed dissertation.  My focus was on the idea of goodness in the plays of Shakespeare. Back then,  I learned that goodness emerges not when principles are adhered to and arguments won or judgments about others are made, but when in concert with one another we work together to find adherence and to extend understanding and compassion.   Goodness is made possible by flexibility.  Goodness requires a disposition that is soft and receptive, not hard. 

It's like wax. If one wants to stamp an impression upon wax, the wax can't be too hard.  If it is, the stamp makes no impact. If the wax is too soft, or runny, the stamp can't make an impression either.  The wax must be soft, receptive, and flexible. 

This is how softness works in humans as well.  To be good, we can't be hard, especially of heart and mind.  But, we can't be so soft that we are runny either.  Our hearts and minds and disposition must be soft, receptive, and flexible. 

I've found that at 60 years old I am the most flexible, receptive, accepting, and soft that I've ever been.  I trust this softness most of the time and it's contributed significantly to the calm I feel, not all the time, but more than I have ever know.