Long ago & far away, I blogged in academic tones about inspiration and respiration. These concepts are still very much part of my daily life, but I was cogitating on them today as I left rehearsal at the retirement center. Without sounding condescending, I find these singers to be inspiring--both in the spirit in which some of them are trying singing for the first time in their lives and in their more serene style of living.
As I chat with individuals each week and learn more of their story, I am moved by the grace in which they are walking through either their own ailment or worse, watching a spouse struggle with: amputation, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer and just general fading of a body 80+ years old.
Serenity as an act of will -- it's possible to will it into one's life before one is eighty, but most people seem to enjoy chaos and don't actually try. Which I am just learning, being so far from home where I can hear myself...
ReplyDeleteToo: most people never get to the point of serenity because they enjoy narcissism and focus on the surface and on the self to the exclusion of the interior life -- which your retirement center people aren't exactly forced to do -- but it seems that for some, decades of life lend a person the time to do this. (Or, perhaps their exterior is wrinkled and they have no choice but to focus on the interior? No. That didn't work for my grandma, the vain old hag.)
ANYWAY. I hear you on the inspiration - my remaining grandma is sort of terrifyingly stubborn and bent on doing things her own way, and yet - she too has her own grace at eighty-five.