Quotes on Aging and Mortality Related Issues
Michael Grossman - Coming to Terms with Aging |
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Writing on the Subject of: |
Writing on the Subject of: |
On accepting aging and our mortality: "As you come to terms with aging, you set in motion a positive cycle of transformative events. Coming to terms with your mortality permits you to see the vital role that aging and dying play. How you characterize these realities changes and, as it does, fears diminish. Diminished fear stimulates core dialogue which reinvigorates introspection. You feel centered. And feeling centered shifts you from other-reliance to self-reliance. You reject the pain the persona inflicts when it demands that you live up to its mercurial standards. Instead you opt for standards that flow from within. You no longer wish to relive youth–to breathe stale air–and you stop choking on your fear of the future. Rather, you breathe in what your organs need as the primary element of good health–the fresh, rich oxygen of the present moment. You choose a world you yourself create."
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On the discovering our mortality: "Sometime between ages five and nine it dawns on us that our comfortable existence is not permanent. We discover there is no guarantee it will even continue. We learn that the world which has fed, coddled and cared for us, intends to take back its gift of life. Equally disturbing, our parents who supply our food, shelter and security, the people we think of as indestructible, are as mortal as we are. That’s just the way it is, we are told, but knowing and accepting are two different things. Like Adam and Eve, we experience a fall from paradise. We live like immortals only to discover our bodies are the clay of earth." |
On the need to live introspectively: "Magical thinking lets us wait for our guru to awaken us the way Michelangelo paints God giving Adam life. We can wait our whole life for the guru’s spark and that’s all takes to fail. To lose, we have only to adore a therapist so much that we relinquish our responsibility, or to stand in too much awe of a mentoring boss, or be blinded by priests, rabbis or other powerful people with insight and influence. These teachers help of course, as long as after we receive their teachings we go within and decide for ourselves." |
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