Still Human

A quiet reading. from Shat Remains

I can see now how easily a life organized around becoming can lose contact with being present.

Not performing presence.
Not speaking about presence.
Actually inhabiting one’s own life while it is occurring.

I think I spent many years partially absent from my own life without realizing it.

Not absent physically.
Absent interiorly.

Always leaning toward the next task.
The next obligation.
The next thing requiring attention.

Even rest was often strategic.
Recovery for future usefulness.

I do not say this critically toward my earlier self. Much of adulthood genuinely requires that kind of carrying.

But eventually the body begins asking different questions.

Not theoretical questions.
Embodied ones.

What happens when the roles organizing your life begin changing?
Who are you when constant productivity is no longer possible—or no longer convincing?
What remains when the noise quiets somewhat?

These questions accumulated gradually for me:
through fatigue,
through aging,
through retirement,
through grief,
through silence,
through grandchildren,
through writing,
through spiritual direction.

At first I often interpreted this loosening as failure.

Reduced energy felt like diminishment.
Needing rest felt embarrassing.
Slower thinking felt threatening.

Even now there are moments when I compare myself internally to earlier versions of myself and feel uneasy about what has changed.

But comparison becomes exhausting after enough years.

And eventually something softer begins asking to emerge underneath the comparison itself.

Honesty.

The recognition that human life was never meant to remain fixed in one form forever.

Perhaps some of our deepest suffering comes not only from change itself, but from fighting the reality that life keeps changing us whether we consent to it or not.

I notice now how much energy people spend trying to preserve earlier versions of themselves.

I understand this instinct deeply.

Trying to maintain competence.
Trying to maintain relevance.
Trying to remain necessary.

But there is another movement occurring beneath all that effort.

A movement toward simplification.
Toward fewer performances.
Toward less defending.
Toward becoming more inhabitable both to oneself and to others.

I think this is one reason tenderness feels increasingly important to me.

Not fragility.
Tenderness.

The ability to remain open without constantly protecting oneself through control, certainty, or performance.

Medicine taught me many beautiful things.

But it also taught me how easily competence can become armor.
How tempting it becomes to stay functional rather than fully present.

Some forms of distance are necessary for survival in difficult work.

But survival strategies often continue long after the original danger has changed.

And later in life we may discover that the habits which once protected us now limit our ability to remain open.

I think this is partly why aging can feel spiritually disruptive.

Not because aging automatically makes people wiser.

But because aging removes certain illusions gradually.

The illusion of control.
The illusion that usefulness alone can sustain identity.
The illusion that strength means needing very little from others.

Reality becomes harder to outrun.

The body keeps telling the truth.
Fatigue tells the truth.
Loss tells the truth.
Love tells the truth.

And perhaps much of peace comes less from controlling life and more from inhabiting it honestly.

I feel less interested now in conversations built entirely around impression management.
Less interested in appearing certain all the time.

I find myself drawn more toward people who can remain human-sized.
People who can laugh gently at themselves.
People who have suffered enough to become more spacious rather than more rigid.

There is relief in these relationships.

A relief from performance.

I think this is part of what companionship really offers us.

Permission to remain human.
Permission to be unfinished.

I think writing began helping me notice this long before I fully understood what I was noticing.

Stories I thought were merely small stories began carrying deeper movements underneath them.

A forgotten grocery list.
A grandchild helping make a bed.
Leaving a conversation to “get some air.”
Resenting interruptions.
Feeling relieved when plans were canceled.

Ordinary life does not usually announce itself as spiritually significant while it is occurring.

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