If you’re not already hiding under the bed covers you may have noticed that we are in the midst of an irrational display of behaviour from our so-called leaders of the free world, is there any wonder that we older folks are struggling to make sense of it all? The important message we are given to help us through these troubled times is ‘stay calm and keep shopping’
Anger, a big dose of blame and a dash of hope are the common responses most of us have been educated into believing are the correct emotional strategies to get things done when such calamities appear. Still, these unenlightened strategies have at their heart the need to make the cause of our problems someone else’s fault. What if these feelings were the resources we needed to dive deeper into our negative selves and discover the emotions that have driven us towards a life of regret, limitations and hurt?
Perhaps it’s time as elders we learnt to shift our priorities from shopping to being thankful for life itself and practising gratitude for others to live in a kinder and wiser future. This new focus of attention holds the seeds for renewed desires and new outcomes where we can design a new purpose, tap into our creativity and engage more effectively in the present moment.
It is an error to believe we are making progress when the opposite is true. For many of us, our retirement plans are in shambles, our planet’s finite resources are on the brink of collapse our own personal finances lack any real power to protect us and our minds are full of confused ideas and fear about the future.
The good news is that adversity is a wonderful opportunity because adversity forces us to go deeper into understanding our disruptive negative patterns, if we sit too long in our comfort zone the tendency to avoid any deeper understanding of our true emotional needs grows stronger. Life can become unbearable if we continue to live on the outer surface, there’s very little we can do about that, the world unfolds around us and how we respond is key.
Jesus talked about building your house on the rock, finding the foundation within yourself that frees you from fear, without this, potential calamities facing us in the world will blow your house over (you over) but it’s unnecessary and not predetermined. It’s not too late to start digging if you have built your house on the sand. If we know the path to free ourselves from anxiety it becomes an opportunity to awaken. There’s more to us than shopping around for pretty things, so let us learn to use the calamities around us to find the kingdom of heaven that lies within us.
