The Incoming Wave

Modernity's aging population, and the fate of the world…

The rain has been falling for some hours. I always feel a sense of gratitude for the precipitatous moisture on our coastal desert soils. This sense of appreciation often dances an awkward jig with the parallel sense of vulnerability, as these shifts in the weather often manifest as a disruptive discomfort in my physical body.

For the way quadriplegia manifests in this body, discomfort, disruptive or otherwise more often than not takes one particular form, that of a generalized malaise expressed as a cold dampness and physiological anxiety with no particular locality.

This means that I often can’t tell the difference between early onset of some disease or infection, and simply a passing reaction to a hiccup in the otherwise placid weather patterns of the region.

But I digress… (A cliché statement to be sure ;-)

I come to this page today, not so much to wax on the frailties of the body, or uncertainties of my own life conditions, but rather to look down at the earth, to see my feet planted there, and then to let my gaze drift skyward, chin up, heart open, and to sing out a little bit of hopefulness into the terrible beauty of our world today.

The rain is pelting the windows as I speak, gushing sideways down the street creating that low level mist, clouds of splatter and spec covering the first 6 inches of ground as the drops rebound from hard surfaces such as asphalt and automobile.

My heart dances joyfully with the drops, delighted for the dynamism of these living systems.

At the desk, leaning into the suite of projects underway these past months through narrowing straits, my attention lit this morning on an effort to convey a concise and compelling narrative for the material ground of my own well-being, and a hopeful contribution to the collective well-being of the world in this time, the process we call MettaCare.

“Use numbers, statistics, and metrics.” said my dear friend Tyler, encouraging me to create a succinct narrative for potential partnership engagements.

MettaCare is a holistic consideration of the world, grounded in the vitality of care at the center of one’s heart. This care expresses as a radiance of nurturing well-being at that center, and radiating outward through the fullness of the body, mind, spirit, and into relatedness in increasing spheres of contact, into the fullness of the cosmos itself, where the expression circles back into the unity dimension of self, unbroken.

… Which is a mouthful, to be sure.…

Given that this MettaCare construct has been given name and an active dialogic surrounding my own acute need for material care, and the practice of my dear brother David to provide material care for others, it is not surprising that the illuminating thread for this inquiry shines brightly as an art of healthcare, and in particular healthcare in the home.

Sitting to write some concise and compelling narrative, from a healthcare perspective, the number of aging baby boomers is often cited in reference to potential systems overwhelm, not just in the institutional carrying capacity, but in economic and social dimensions as well.

As my eyes drifted across references to these statistics, I’m struck to realize I am less familiar with a counter narrative.

I often reflect on the phrase “algorithmic capitalism is eating the world,” and indeed, GDP, “recession,” markets, dollars, costs, and profit and other words of this nature adorn our daily “modern” experience.

The cost of doing business, the cost to the environment, the price of milk, or tea in China… We think in economic terms, but we have lost the robust meaning of the word. When we talk about economy, we must often refer to the financial economy, and the natural values of earth and life and time that get ground up to make that porridge.

Economy, as I am also often fond of saying, comes from the Greek “oikonomia” and refers to the management of a household. The body is a household; a home is a household; as is a community, a nation, a globe. Infinitely more than the abstracted math of finance makes an economy.

Our thinking on the term is anemic and dangerously so, and the starvation of the world from that conception is evident in far too many expressions.

But I digress… (Yet again. ;-)

I fear there are countless rabbit holes in this thread of inquiry into which I can find myself tumbling. Perhaps the topics explored here are ripe for a more in-depth platform, and perhaps I will find my way to those pages in time.

How many ways are there in which the role of elders in our world has become convoluted, isolated, diminished, even condemned? I will leave this rabbit hole to a further exploration in some other context.

I sat with a friend today, in her 60s I believe, who expressed regret that her generation had sought to set right the ship of the world, and had failed. With some resolve to do “what she could,” she rested also in heartbreak at the world that seems inevitably left to the younger generations.

But as my dear friend Dr. Ari has said, it is not full employment, but full engagement that makes a society well. Employment = financial; Engagement = economy.

If I am 25 and enthusiastic about making some impact on the world, solving some problem, saving some population or ecosystem, my neighbor of 75 years in age carries the potential wisdom of three of my lifetimes.

I mean, in no way, to describe one generation as more or less valuable than any other, and I mean not to diminish the role of engagement that any being, regardless of age or gender or species has to play in a profound wellness of the world. So I will say nothing more about that 25-year-old and their enthusiasm, intelligence, energy, or wisdom.

But that neighbor of 75 and their peers in generational time, those boomers about to be, and those already 65 years of experience or more, express, if we will but listen to ourselves, far more value in wisdom than any amount of “cost” that they may bring to our struggling economies.

A healthy economy both uses everything, and creates no waste.

Our modern world, so struggling for well-being in the context of an ancient planet, could starve to death in a garden. For all of our energy, ingenuity, and sense of manifest destiny, could do quite well to slow down our charge towards the brink, release our grasping desperation for profit and progress, and listen more carefully to that rumbling sound on the horizon, a tidal wave of wisdom incoming.

Sailing, swimming, drowning, it’s up to us…