249. Mature dating is a fun adventure when we live in harmony with the way of it

Dating in your senior or mature years is really not much different from any other aspect of life. It’s one slice of life. However, the struggle, strife and suffering that most people experience in everyday life is often magnified and brought to the fore when we’re dating because romantic relationships are so dramatic and intensely personal. The pain of a lost love can be like no other pain.

That’s why it’s so helpful to see that we can back off from life and not take it personally when we realize that we’re being lived and we really have no control. Then it’s a matter of just flowing with life as it happens rather than trying to fight or control what happens.

If these are new ideas to you I understand; they can sound crazy. They did to me too, at first. However, nothing I had ever done relieved the emotional hurt I often felt when life didn’t go my way. And when I read about what the sages have been teaching throughout the centuries it seemed to me that they might just have something. Those who saw the light (enlightened?) were from all parts of the world, all cultures, all centuries, and they all had come to see the same thing, with no input from each other because there wasn’t the communication in those days that there is today.

What they all saw, simply put, is that some Life Force – call it God if you like – is energizing itself into form, and we humans, like every other form in existence, are among the objects brought into existence.

We’re being lived. If you don’t think so try to make yourself do nothing, for example. You can’t do it. Try not breathing. You can’t. Try not thinking. You can’t. Try not blinking your eyes or sneezing or hiccupping. It just can’t be done. What moves your hands when you express yourself as you talk? What just made you swallow? Obviously we’re not in control of this “me” we think we are. Even the very idea of “I” or “me” is no more than a thought. No one has ever located a Me anywhere. This so-called Me has no individual power. It can’t exist for a split second without the power that enlivens it and animates it. So how could it be in charge of how life should go?

Seeing that, what the sages taught is to just relax, see life as it really is, and flow with it. Realize that what happens is obviously supposed to happen, for no other reason than that it does. You’re stood up for a date? Obviously you were supposed to spend that time doing something else. How do you know? Because the time is available and you’re going to fill it some way, whether you like it or not. Your honey decides to leave you? It must be that you’re supposed to be alone for awhile, or be available to meet someone else. Again, how can I know that? Simple. Because that’s what is and you can’t argue with it. You can think it should be different. You can wish it would be different. But in the end, it just is the way it is. So why spend all that energy and misery resisting the way it is? That's insanity, and a lot of suffering.

Flowing with life the way it is may sound like caving in and giving up but it’s not. It’s a vital, snappy, full-of-life, active way to live. It’s a not-doing that begins to recognize the intelligence-energy of the universe as it is. You begin to see the fullness of life that’s always been present and is available for us to realize when we stop trying to control life. And though we're not the doers everything gets done.

In this realization you’re not succumbing and folding up with your tail between your legs. And you’re not crawling into bed to bawl your eyes out and be depressed because life let you down. Instead, you’re watching with amazement as life unfolds in the way it does, which might be much different than you had expected. What a mystery! What a delight! Life sparkles amazingly when we just see it as it is, and realize we're being lived right along with everything else. We're actually that living power showing up now as a human. What a miracle as it changes every second! Dating can be exciting, adventuresome and fun when we simply live harmoniously with the way it is. What the heck! Might as well since life is going to be the way it is whether we like it or not. We don’t get a vote, have you noticed? In fact, there is no independent "we" to ever have had a vote in the first place. How can a drop of ocean spray vote against the ocean?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer