Enlightenment in the Last Five Minutes
I've recently started saying I'm 81 1/2 when people ask my age. We used to do that when we were young because we desperately wanted to be older. Around 40 or 50, we desperately want to be younger.
Instead of looking forward to getting older, we fear it and resist it as if it were possible.
Perhaps the reality of death has something to do with it. We don't think much about death in the first half of life. But in the second half, it seems to be all around us. We hear reports of famous people and some of our friends, who have been a part of our lives, passing away. In my case, many of them are younger than me.
People seem to react to the approaching inevitability of death in two ways. It's like being on a delightful vacation that is ending, and we haven't experienced or achieved everything we wanted. Some individuals start packing and patiently wait for the bus. Others strive to accomplish as much as possible during those final days. Some use this time to reflect on their lives and uncover their true selves that their various roles have overshadowed.
Connie Zwieg, in her book "The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul," emphasizes that this stage of life can be incredibly fulfilling if we engage in the necessary inner work to connect with our soul and discover our true selves, the essence of who we are behind those roles we’ve played all our lives.
One of the blessings of late life is that our ego tends to recede and exercises less control over our decisions. When we were young, we were conditioned by our culture to believe that all things are possible. in late life, we realize that all things are not possible anymore, and we can quit striving for external rewards and start the inner journey to explore questions such as:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is most important in my life?
What is non-negotiable?
What unfinished business needs to be taken care of?
Who do I need to forgive . . . Including myself?
Zweig calls this aging from the inside out. Father Richard Rohr, who did hospice work for 14 years, said that most people “get it” at the end of life. Some in the last year, some in the last days, and some in the last five minutes. He calls this enlightenment at gunpoint. That’s what happened to Scrooge.
Everybody around Scrooge, including himself, would have been happier if he “got it” earlier. Maybe the ego, which separates us from others, is the first to leave, clearing the way to see how it’s never been about us.