Drag

I’m excited for this afternoon because I get to meet with one of my long-time mentees “in person” for the first time in well over a year. Granted, we will be masked and there will be plexiglass between us, but it will be so good to share each other’s energy and expressions in physical form, versus Zoom. We are both pretty animated people. My mentee is a fifth grader, so this year, she is officially one of the “big dawgs” at her elementary school. She and her mom opted for us to meet in person this school year because my mentee decided that this was best. “No offense, but your dogs are kinda loud on Zoom,” she said. I am not offended. I can’t wait to see her. Isn’t it just so crazy about how much we once took for granted, before this pandemic came around and changed the world?

In other news, I downloaded a book recently which I have not yet read, but I think that the title is incredibly intriguing. (I always have several downloaded books on my Kindle, in queue. I like feeling excitement and anticipation for what to read next.) The book is called The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul. In reading a little blurb about the book by the author, Dr. Connie Zweig, she mentions that she thinks that people should stop counting age after 55. She suggests that around that age, you shift from all of your “roles” in life, into becoming a wise “Elder” which Zweig describes this way: “to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are.”

Reflecting on this thought, most of our adulthood is full of roles, isn’t it?

Wife/Husband/Mother/Father/Writer/Teacher/Doctor/PTA Parent/Committee Person/Banker/Executive/Supervisor/Entertainer/Mentor/Sister/Brother/Best Friend/Lover/Listener/Consumer etc. etc.

Dr. Zweig believes that “This identification with ego and self-image is a key obstacle to overcome in aging from the inside out. The ego’s goals are not the real tasks of late life. Our tasks now require us to move our attention from the exterior world to the interior one, from the ego’s role in society to the soul’s deeper purpose.”

I recently finished reading No Cure for Being Human, which is a heart-wrenching, brutally honest account of a young woman living with Stage 4 colon cancer. The author is Kate Bowler, a 40-year-old religion professor at Duke University, happily married to her high school sweetheart, and a mother of a young son. After her diagnosis, she decided to keep teaching and writing after conferring with one of her colleagues. Bowler was questioning whether continuing these activities, was “good” use of her quite possibly limited time left on Earth. Her colleague said, “I guess that depends if this is a career or a calling.”

That’s one of the blessings which we can find in aging. We can really start to hone in on our callings. We can start to shed everything that isn’t calling us, from our deepest, most intuitive self. We can stop identifying with our “doing selves” and our “roles”, and we can start to become lovingly intimate with our “being” selves. And we can choose to do this at any time in our lives. We don’t have to wait until we are 55. The older we get (not necessarily in age, but in wisdom), it becomes clearer that the only certainty in life is uncertainty. We can choose to stop fighting against that truth and just explore with profound curiosity, what it really is, that calls to each of us.

I once watched an interview with RuPaul, the famous American drag queen. RuPaul said this, “My therapist said to me once, ‘You know Ru, the power you have in drag is available to you out of drag.’ ”

Maybe wisdom is coming to the realization that our power does not come from “our drag” – our roles and our identifications and our achievements and our appearances. Perhaps our real power is the fathomless summons of our souls. And that enduring power, deep inside of us, is timeless and has been with us from the beginning of time. Today, let’s quiet down and take some time to remove all of the heaviness of “our drag” and just sit still and listen. What is calling to us from our hearts? What feels most authentic? How can we shed what no longer resonates? What is true? What is real? What is beautiful to us? What really matters?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.