The Gifts and Griefs of Transcendence
Are we using technology to escape death? To escape our human limitations?
How much do I want to expand my limits, and how much do I want to embrace them?
Wealth can lead to expansion. Wealth can also lead to disconnection. So many billionaires, depressed.
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What do I want to stay connected to, as I expand?
What do I want to stay connected to, as I expand?
What do I want to stay connected to, as I expand?
What can I? What must I?
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Womb-bearers (no longer “women,” as we collectively evolve past that word) are freezing their eggs. They can now have healthy babies at 45, maybe soon at 50. And the concern of not having as much life with our children, if we conceive later, is waning… because we will be able to live to 100. Maybe soon we can extend to 200. Maybe we’ll freeze our aging process all-together, just as we’ve frozen these eggs. Potential life, eternally. Transcending our limits. Eggs used to expire… not anymore (at least for those who can afford these procedures, while the others’ choices stay more limited). Will the same be true for the rest of our body’s parts - for our bodies as a whole?
Are we using new services and technology (that wealth can buy) to escape the pains and burdens of being in a body? Hiring night nurses to wake up when the newborns cry, so we can sleep “like a baby” while someone else is up, feeding ours. Missing one of the oldest and most profound initiations into adulthood. It’s exhausting, it’s brutal, it breeds resentment - sometimes breaking partners apart, sometimes making them hate their child… and it’s age-old. It’s deeply human. (What is it though, to be human? Is this changing?). And I imagine it can also be beautiful, to take on a different consciousness of time, with the baby as your guide - waking up through the night to have your quiet hours together, holding this small, warm creature close to your chest, whose needs know nothing about the capitalist grind of “productivity.”
What kind of pain am I wanting to be with, to experience certain parts of life?
[ They say a heart can’t fully love unless it opens itself to grief.
Appreciation feels, to me, much starker when there has been hardship. ]
What kind of pain am I wanting to transcend, to experience certain forms of ease? It’s much easier to work & make money when my body loses the inconveniences of illness or injury, through modern medicine or the powerful herbal supplements that shipping services can bring in these days… even losing the monthly burden of menstruation. My hormonal IUD has been an ever-present inner controversy, but also a fairly easy choice for me. Sometimes I feel loss though, when others talk of learning deeply about themselves through their monthly cycles.
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How do I grow through ease, and how do I grow through challenge?
How do I grow through ease, and how do I grow through challenge?
How do I grow through ease, and how do I grow through challenge?
How can I? How must I?
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What older parts of life do I want to stay connected to, what newer parts of life do I want to expand into?
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When will I choose to die? To slow myself down, completely? And when will I choose to extend my activeness, my doing and doing and doing, and give up the tender beauty of a slower being?
When can I? When must I?
