Person on the Page

I have lived my entire life in the grip of fear. 

When artist Georgia O’Keeffe, the Mother of American Modernism, the woman whose decades-long career would transcend conventional art movements of her time, made this startling statement in 1938, I like to imagine that she spoke across time and space directly to me. 

I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.

Her words became the clarion call that pushed me, despite sometimes paralyzing fear and self-doubt, to be the first in my family to attend college. They nudged me on, though terrified, to pursue graduate degrees, and later nurtured my effort, in the midst of the most debilitating fear I had ever experienced, to leave my hometown and pursue a career alone and make a new home. 

Now I find myself at the end of that career, facing a phase of life I always swore to myself I would never enter: retirement. 

While  O’Keeffe’s words return to mind as I cross the threshold between a work routine by which I have defined myself and a new life that I enter reluctantly and for which I feel ill-prepared, I wonder about their continued application to my circumstances.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not knocking fear.  Fear is good.  It keeps us from touching things that would burn us, from saying things that would get us into trouble. It prevents us from following the cars ahead of us too closely when we drive and from weaving in and out of lanes on a busy highway. 

Fear is a means of self-preservation. But it can also prevent us from enjoying a perfectly good experience. It can spawn worry and doubt, making every moment a struggle.  

Fear has been my lifelong companion.  It’s familiar and, sadly, has become routine.

As I enter what will be the final phase of my life, I wonder if I should abandon it and try something new. 

Enter the Wizard of Awe

Funny how when I find myself thinking about something—an item I want to buy or an idea I want to explore—Google and my YouTube app seem to be listening to my thoughts. They present me with ads for the very products I want or videos on the subject about which I have been musing. 

That’s how I encountered Dot Fisher-Smith.

In the YouTube video Wisdom at 96: Life Advice from a Century of Experience produced by Green Renaissance, the 96-year-old Oregon artist proposes a different approach to life than the one that has guided me up to now. She says, simply,

I want to be a child of wonder and astonishment.

In the video, Fisher-Smith can be seen, wafer-thin and remarkably lithe, scampering through a forest like a wood sprite. She jumps in mud puddles along a road and swings on a swingset in a park. 

“I had a troubled childhood,” she tells her interviewer.  “I’m having my happy childhood now.”

I had a troubled childhood too. Would it be possible for me now to cultivate the wonder that a child in the best of circumstances experiences, the excitement that comes from encountering life for the first time? Can I turn away from fear and adopt an attitude of awe?

Fisher-Smith says that she devotes her time to experimenting, exploring, being curious, looking at things, discovering. She has committed herself, she says, to not being afraid. While she acknowledges that she will face a growing number of physical and perhaps cognitive limitations in the future, she is determined to “live as fully as I can with what I have.”

Yes. That’s what I want. I would like for this part of my life to be, to all extents possible, a happy childhood.

A wizard of awe, Fisher-Smith invites us to step behind the façade of aging—images of declining mental capacity, physical disintegration, and the onset of a host of diseases. Step beyond all that, she seems to suggest, and understand aging as an opportunity to find wonder and astonishment at the very core of being alive.

I imagine myself taking my daily walks through the neighborhood and experiencing fully the world around me. Listening—really listening—to the songs of birds, the drone of a breeze, the music of my neighbors’ voices as they greet me. I see myself reading, studying, delving into all the subjects that have interested me over the years but that I have been too busy to pursue. And I envision myself really reaching out to friends, to build better, deeper, more genuine relationships.   

Can I, in this final phase of my life, lay down the burden of fear and take up an attitude of awe?

Twelve Women and a Book

As I drove to the public library to attend for the first time a monthly book discussion group, I felt anticipation—tinged with dread.

On one hand, I know how lucky I am. As a new retiree, I have choices. I am able to plan my days and shape the time ahead. I can circumvent the isolation and loneliness that sometimes accompany old age by consciously creating opportunities for myself. I love reading and discussing literature, so I eagerly sought out a book group.

On the other hand, I have heard the scuttle about book groups. They are often more social than intellectual. Some are more about eating and drinking than about exploring books. In some, the book itself may never be seen or mentioned. The public library’s book group meets on Thursday mornings, so it is almost surely attended by retired people—a population more likely to be free to come on a weekday morning. Would this group be a gathering of older folks, lonely and hoping for some light conversation, perhaps not really interested in reading at all?

I entered the small conference room at the library and found it packed. Only one seat left. A seat seemingly waiting for me. Twelve other women were already there, each with a copy of this month’s book in hand, some with notebooks containing handwritten notes. Looking at each of them, I guessed that they were all a good deal older than I.

But, as I soon learned, they were intellectually focused and curious. Some, like me, had earned PhDs. Others had taught high school English or elementary school. One had enjoyed a long career in the healthcare industry. Another had been a businesswoman and had traveled the world.

Each woman had read the book closely and brought her own perspective, gleaned from the wealth of her own experience, to the group. We discussed, we argued, we speculated, and we laughed. The room hummed with our energy. 

And though we did not go off together after the meeting to scamper in the woods or jump in puddles, we were childlike in our enjoyment of each other and in our openness to wonder.

Sitting among these intelligent, vital women, I felt a glimmer of awe.  

Here it is, I thought. The start of my happy childhood. 

Cover Photo: Pixabay

Thank you for reading!