Wow. I love and appreciate your honesty. At 63, I realize I notice what you notice, but I also know that I'm not moving enough, so my hands are getting tighter, my lower limbs are retaining edema, and it's my own damn fault. Is it too late? If I start moving now, will it make a difference? I know if I do nothing, nothing is what might be my future. An editor is reading my book. He's 76. He's edited very famous people. I wrote it but didn't promote it. A decade ago I didn't feel it was worthy. Last night I woke dreaming about it, seeing on my phone you'd written something. Aha, something to look forward to... but I settled in and read my own book for about 3 hours now since I've learned he is now reading it for free.
What I love about you and your writing is the way you bore down into the bone of it. I notice, those keeping up with what they've promised they would write, do it more on the surface. They are there, but not there. You are there when you write. When you deliver. Being there is enough. Not duty and obligation but genuine clarity and heartfelt discovery. I await more, Goddess of India.
We say “it’s never too late” so often that I wonder if it will make a difference if I say it to you, now, again, and tell you that it will make a difference if you start moving again. It’s also never too late to revisit the book you wrote a decade ago, because sometimes it just takes that long for a work to be readied for the world.
Your comment has stirred me in a way that I cannot describe with words. In you I have found a faithful reader, and a source of tremendous encouragement. I sometimes marvel at what the Internet does for us, and I’m ever so glad for it.
We are mirrors. The internet can connect people who never before would have seen their counterparts elsewhere. This helps us realize that we are not alone. A friend who passed in 2013 called me her "mind-opener". In her culture, she couldn't "be" who she wanted to be. The pressure to conform is incredibly strong. My folks would have liked me to follow in their footsteps, but I couldn't and wouldn't. After looking down her nose at me for decades, after reading my book, my mom said, "If I had my life to live over again, I would live my life exactly as you have lived yours." This all works better when there are no choices.
I really liked your honest self-observations on what 'old enough, good enough, fast enough, often enough means!'
At whatever age, each of us lives within these imperatives and your nailing them so effectively set me drilling for water deeper into my own thinking. Thank you for creating such an opportunity.
Is it a social construct when we feel young or old? Or is it an internal clock that determines that?
Old for what? To look younger, to feel accomplished or dismayed at unrealized goals?
Is the body the measure of age? Maybe not.
I think there is an internal psychological age and a physical age. Often the two do not coincide.
One day at 34 you may realise you already have the identity you have been striving for - psychological age.
While I at 65, which is what's I am, may feel the identity I have built up was just a scaffolding, only now appreciating the building it helped raise.
Psychological age seems little to do with the numerical one.
Does well- being, feeling that you are living the life you want to, the capacity to love and be loved, to have less illusioned thinking, of being rather than having, depend on physical age?
No I think not. It comes when you are truly ' old enough'!
Thank you, Madhu, for I know what it took for you to revive your account on Substack. Every conversation with you allows me to answer the questions (about age, and much else) I didn't even know I had. It is useful, and extremely reassuring, to look at age not as an absolute and decisive number that slots you into a particular phase of life, but as a phenomenon that forever exists in the duality of psychological and biological.
I look forward to reading you on Substack very soon. :)
first i notice, before comment here, i need to update the profile picture, i am older than my profile picture.
Journalisa beautifully captured about your writing: 'you are there when you write'.
These days, when most writing is done either to satisfy an imaginary reader, publisher or sometimes write to a bot that will determine whether an article is fit for publishing etc, Your writing is there and you are there with it; Your words guide readers to peel one layer of skin after another, until they get to feel the bones (ageless truth)
gently sautéing with 'This is how you grow old' to tossing around between different time frames to explore aging and sprinkling the dish with witty thoughts (recipe from quick and easy section of blog) before serving a simply delicious witamin enriched meal to us.
Thank you, i don't mind this meal is not one of the 'quick and easy read' and 'quick and easy forget'
Looking forward to main course.
On a side note: your article also opened up an interesting question: Why should one should still be 18 (India) to drive as driving has become much easier with all technology revolution ?
when a rule about at what age one should drive, marry, start work, vote is established, it hardly ever changes. I think rules never get old!
Thank you, Sudheer. Your review (of sorts?) of my work always leaves me awestruck and unravels even more layers that I didn’t even know existed.
Also, I think it’s okay to wait until 18 to start driving. Especially in India when public transit options are more than they are in the US, hired help (to drive you around) and rented cars are fairly cheap, and the percentage of car owners is relatively small. But you make an interesting observation that rules never get old!
The arc of wanting to experience the world outside to growing to question the world inside physically and spiritually comes through the pursuit of this question here.
This reminds me of the time I used to commute in the above-the-ground metro after dark, and to be able to look outside, I needed to look through the shadow my body would cast on the window. The internal and external worlds are entwined in ways that it’s difficult to tell one apart from the other.
This hits waaaaay too close to home. Except that I don't remember ever wanting to be older than I was - I've been feeling too old for about 10 years now (I'm a year younger than you). It's the sort of complaint that always sounds weird to people who are older than you are, but it's not about the number, it's about your perceptions about what you should have achieved by now. Because most of the middle-aged/elderly people who would laugh if I told them I felt old had ticked far more of life's conventional boxes by my age than I have. I try to remind myself that my actual mission in life consists of an inner journey where the goals are subtle, the gains are gradual, the victories are invisible and the timeline is eternal, but sometimes that's a comfort and sometimes it isn't.
Oh wow, I resonate with every single thing that you've said in your comment. In fact, the unedited version of this piece has bits where I say I feel like I'm past my prime at thirty-four. Except I realise how that might sound to someone who's older. I realise it even more so when you say that you feel exactly as I do, except you're one year younger! :)
This is gold: "I try to remind myself that my actual mission in life consists of an inner journey where the goals are subtle, the gains are gradual, the victories are invisible and the timeline is eternal, but sometimes that's a comfort and sometimes it isn't." I remind myself of this every single day, except I phrase it a lot less articulately.
Wow. I love and appreciate your honesty. At 63, I realize I notice what you notice, but I also know that I'm not moving enough, so my hands are getting tighter, my lower limbs are retaining edema, and it's my own damn fault. Is it too late? If I start moving now, will it make a difference? I know if I do nothing, nothing is what might be my future. An editor is reading my book. He's 76. He's edited very famous people. I wrote it but didn't promote it. A decade ago I didn't feel it was worthy. Last night I woke dreaming about it, seeing on my phone you'd written something. Aha, something to look forward to... but I settled in and read my own book for about 3 hours now since I've learned he is now reading it for free.
What I love about you and your writing is the way you bore down into the bone of it. I notice, those keeping up with what they've promised they would write, do it more on the surface. They are there, but not there. You are there when you write. When you deliver. Being there is enough. Not duty and obligation but genuine clarity and heartfelt discovery. I await more, Goddess of India.
We say “it’s never too late” so often that I wonder if it will make a difference if I say it to you, now, again, and tell you that it will make a difference if you start moving again. It’s also never too late to revisit the book you wrote a decade ago, because sometimes it just takes that long for a work to be readied for the world.
Your comment has stirred me in a way that I cannot describe with words. In you I have found a faithful reader, and a source of tremendous encouragement. I sometimes marvel at what the Internet does for us, and I’m ever so glad for it.
We are mirrors. The internet can connect people who never before would have seen their counterparts elsewhere. This helps us realize that we are not alone. A friend who passed in 2013 called me her "mind-opener". In her culture, she couldn't "be" who she wanted to be. The pressure to conform is incredibly strong. My folks would have liked me to follow in their footsteps, but I couldn't and wouldn't. After looking down her nose at me for decades, after reading my book, my mom said, "If I had my life to live over again, I would live my life exactly as you have lived yours." This all works better when there are no choices.
You will like this short little video. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/bonnie-garmus-on-her-subversive-novel-lessons-in-chemistry/ I bet it will inspire you!
I really liked your honest self-observations on what 'old enough, good enough, fast enough, often enough means!'
At whatever age, each of us lives within these imperatives and your nailing them so effectively set me drilling for water deeper into my own thinking. Thank you for creating such an opportunity.
Is it a social construct when we feel young or old? Or is it an internal clock that determines that?
Old for what? To look younger, to feel accomplished or dismayed at unrealized goals?
Is the body the measure of age? Maybe not.
I think there is an internal psychological age and a physical age. Often the two do not coincide.
One day at 34 you may realise you already have the identity you have been striving for - psychological age.
While I at 65, which is what's I am, may feel the identity I have built up was just a scaffolding, only now appreciating the building it helped raise.
Psychological age seems little to do with the numerical one.
Does well- being, feeling that you are living the life you want to, the capacity to love and be loved, to have less illusioned thinking, of being rather than having, depend on physical age?
No I think not. It comes when you are truly ' old enough'!
Thank you, Madhu, for I know what it took for you to revive your account on Substack. Every conversation with you allows me to answer the questions (about age, and much else) I didn't even know I had. It is useful, and extremely reassuring, to look at age not as an absolute and decisive number that slots you into a particular phase of life, but as a phenomenon that forever exists in the duality of psychological and biological.
I look forward to reading you on Substack very soon. :)
first i notice, before comment here, i need to update the profile picture, i am older than my profile picture.
Journalisa beautifully captured about your writing: 'you are there when you write'.
These days, when most writing is done either to satisfy an imaginary reader, publisher or sometimes write to a bot that will determine whether an article is fit for publishing etc, Your writing is there and you are there with it; Your words guide readers to peel one layer of skin after another, until they get to feel the bones (ageless truth)
gently sautéing with 'This is how you grow old' to tossing around between different time frames to explore aging and sprinkling the dish with witty thoughts (recipe from quick and easy section of blog) before serving a simply delicious witamin enriched meal to us.
Thank you, i don't mind this meal is not one of the 'quick and easy read' and 'quick and easy forget'
Looking forward to main course.
On a side note: your article also opened up an interesting question: Why should one should still be 18 (India) to drive as driving has become much easier with all technology revolution ?
when a rule about at what age one should drive, marry, start work, vote is established, it hardly ever changes. I think rules never get old!
Thank you, Sudheer. Your review (of sorts?) of my work always leaves me awestruck and unravels even more layers that I didn’t even know existed.
Also, I think it’s okay to wait until 18 to start driving. Especially in India when public transit options are more than they are in the US, hired help (to drive you around) and rented cars are fairly cheap, and the percentage of car owners is relatively small. But you make an interesting observation that rules never get old!
The arc of wanting to experience the world outside to growing to question the world inside physically and spiritually comes through the pursuit of this question here.
I am waiting to read the next part.
This reminds me of the time I used to commute in the above-the-ground metro after dark, and to be able to look outside, I needed to look through the shadow my body would cast on the window. The internal and external worlds are entwined in ways that it’s difficult to tell one apart from the other.
This hits waaaaay too close to home. Except that I don't remember ever wanting to be older than I was - I've been feeling too old for about 10 years now (I'm a year younger than you). It's the sort of complaint that always sounds weird to people who are older than you are, but it's not about the number, it's about your perceptions about what you should have achieved by now. Because most of the middle-aged/elderly people who would laugh if I told them I felt old had ticked far more of life's conventional boxes by my age than I have. I try to remind myself that my actual mission in life consists of an inner journey where the goals are subtle, the gains are gradual, the victories are invisible and the timeline is eternal, but sometimes that's a comfort and sometimes it isn't.
Oh wow, I resonate with every single thing that you've said in your comment. In fact, the unedited version of this piece has bits where I say I feel like I'm past my prime at thirty-four. Except I realise how that might sound to someone who's older. I realise it even more so when you say that you feel exactly as I do, except you're one year younger! :)
This is gold: "I try to remind myself that my actual mission in life consists of an inner journey where the goals are subtle, the gains are gradual, the victories are invisible and the timeline is eternal, but sometimes that's a comfort and sometimes it isn't." I remind myself of this every single day, except I phrase it a lot less articulately.
Sounds like we have a lot in common :) We should all do "director's cut" versions of our essays where we leave all the edited-out bits in haha