26. Mature dating as carefree as a playful pup

You know that natural delight with life that you see in a playful pup or a cooing baby? As a senior in the dating world do you feel that natural delight? Probably not. But animals and small children live that all the time. It’s their nature, and it’s also our nature. But we usually don’t live in that freedom and inner joy. Why not?

The sages and mystics throughout the centuries have all said the same thing after awakening to the reality of life. The difference, they say, is that small children, under the age of two or so, don’t yet have that sense of “me”. Put them in front of a mirror and they don’t know the reflection there is their own image. So without a sense of “me” they don’t try to control and judge the world. They’re simply aware of the world, without really even knowing they’re aware. It’s simply total surrender to “what is”. But that’s even a wrong way to say it because there’s no sense of a “me” there to surrender. It’s just Isness, if you could say it that way.

I take a 3- or 4-mile walk most mornings, and this morning I saw some people stopped and talking to a neighbor. A dog on a leash was standing there, just waiting calmly. Another dog might be straining to move, but not because he’s unhappy, only because he’s curious and his nature is to explore. A lot of squirrels play in my back yard and they’re totally spontaneous. They jump here and there, sometimes playfully chasing each other at rocket speed, totally at ease with just being. They don’t even know they’re squirrels. They just are!

We “are” also, without even thinking about it. Without thought we know we exist, that we “are”. From that place we’re just simple presence or awareness, like an animal or a small child. But we’ve taken on a “me” identity, and with that we’ve also assumed that we know how the world should be working and what people should be doing. What we don’t seem to notice, and the mystics have always pointed out, is that what we think about the workings of people and the world has nothing to do with how it really is. We think our date should be nice to us when they’re not. Well, guess what? Reality always wins – they weren’t nice. That’s it. If we want to argue with that we’ll be miserable. If we want to simply see it as the way life is sometimes we’ll be spontaneously happy, like a small child.

Then from that freedom we might ask them to be nicer but we’re just asking. We’re not trying to change them so we’ll be happy. We can ask and if they don’t agree we can just let them be who they are while we move on to other things. It’s really simple when we get rid of the idea that “I’m a separate entity that has some control” and “I know how life should be”. We’re not in control. We can see “what is as it is” and be joyful. Or we can think “we” know best, and fight and argue and be in pain.

Copyright © 2005 Chuck Custer