Aging and Loving

One of the most amazing mysteries of the mind is how it can hold, at the same time, a knowing of its finiteness and a sense of an infinite; in it the finite relates to the infinite. How can it be that something that is finite--our mind--can be aware of the mysterious depth of infinity? Theologians and philosophers in the past and present have explained this as God's finger-print on our existence. They have attempted to say that our ability to perceive the infinite in these tangential (never direct ways) must be a sign that God exists and that we are predestined to know God in this way. But who says? How do we even know God's infinite? Perhaps God is not! Perhaps what we call God is an endless (not infinite) chain of finite events, some recurring some unique. Perhaps the depth of the infinite really doesn't have a bottom, not even at the bottom of God--a Godtom.

And yet, we sense something. Just like Kierkegaard's dancer who upon leaping high up into the air experiences a moment of weightless infinity before tumbling down again, before gravity reclaims her. Is a stone we throw up in the air flying? Not according to my youngest son Gabriel. "That's plummeting," he said, "not flying."

How do we experience the infinite throughout a life-time? Is it in moments from which we "plummet" back to earth, to the finite? Is it with effort? Or do we happen into that sphere without working on it?
One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me is that aging is, among many other things, about an ever concretizing sense of my own finiteness.  Alongside this experience is a growing awareness of those moments of infinity. It is the contrast, the differential, that really alerts me to it.

Perhaps the greatest problem of aging is fear. Fear of pain, fear of increasing disability, fear of loneliness.We're often compelled to quell that fear by investing our feelings and resources in the possibility of a longer life, perhaps an infinite one. But what does that really do for us? Can we get in touch with the infinite by living longer? Likely not. How do we find that infinite? How and where do we encounter it?

My interest in philosophy was never analytical but rather about the mysterious things in the world. I have wondered for a long time, for example, how the minute hand of a clock can actually make it from one number to the next. How it can overcome any distance at all, because the space between two points is infinite. I have wondered how a major 7 chord can sound so open to yearning for completion and how it can be continued by moving on a step up or down to another major 7 chord. I have wondered where the longing comes from that I feel when I hear wind blow through pine-trees…The infinite is everywhere. It even seems to hang around in moments of utter destruction and devastation . . . an echo of a spirit that seems to hover over battle-fields, the abandoned town of Tchernobyl, the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

I imagine this infinite--that shows itself in and through the finite events of our human history as well as the finite acts of nature--as an aura of love, a shroud of kindness. It wraps itself around us, reminding us--again and again--not to ask "why." "Why" the word that makes us go deeper and deeper into the nature of things, of the universe, and yet also the word that leaves us not knowing anything.

This infinite, I believe, encourages us to use our senses--our ears, eyes, noses, skin--to feel what cannot be known. We cannot "know" the infinite. But we sure can feel it. Loving is using our senses, not our minds. Loving is being "sensual."  Loving is going into the micro-moments of connection and positivity resonance (Barbara Frederickson) through our senses.

Do you know people who say this: "Don't get me wrong, I love my "blank" . . . but…? More often than not the person doesn't mean "love" when they assert it. In fact, more often than not they have not experienced the person they're referring to in a sensual way in a long time, if ever. Rather, their sense of love is controlled by what they believe is acceptable, expected. Can we allow ourselves to love without saying it in those words? And/or can we allow that love is first and foremost a sensual experience of the eyes, the mouth, the ears, the nose and the skin?

Allowing ourselves to go there is to give permission to love the way babies and children do, i.e., in and through real-time physical presence. Without such presence there is no love. When such presence is the case we "know" because our senses tell the story.  Goose-bumps, yearning, longing, etc. all send us information about what's going on. Every goose-bumps moment is an infinite one. Yes, they end, the bumps go away and we're back down in finite reality. We yearn for repetition. And if we're lucky, it will come.

Getting older for me means being wrapped into this shroud of the infinite, allowing it to happen, renewing my wish and intent to experience the way sensually before I attempt to understand it intellectually. It means living with open eyes, open ears, open skin and an open heart, even in the face of anger, cruelty and sadness. It means also that I can show myself fearlessly to others so they can take me in sensually and with openness.