I was with a larger group of men on Saturday morning. All ages. But the occasion was for seniors. So there were most of them.
Most of them are a good way past my own age, in the autumn of life, men who have watched the world shed its skin eight or nine times and are still curious, still funny, still busy building something. Cultivated in the way you can't read your way to. And it's a privilege of the kind you only get access to if you can set yourself aside and simply ask them to tell. So I did.
We know each other, but more in the way where you know of each other than where you know each other closely. You know, roughly, what the other man does. You don't really know who he is.
At one point one of them comes over to me. A wonderful Human Being in the true sense of the word. Flawed like the rest of us, but oriented towards something that has pulled him through all of it, so that he's still just a great Living Light in his mid-eighties.
Last month, by a stroke of luck, he had found himself a new "young" girlfriend - meaning 10-15 years older than me - so naturally that helps the mood, the zest for life and the Spark as well. If, that is, you believe in Love. I do - and I suppose you'd have to, if you're still actively looking for it and seeking it in your 80s, I think.
Life-affirming.
So he says that he follows me in here. That he broadly agrees with what I write. And then he adds, a little apologetically or by way of explanation, that he doesn't hit like on it all that often.
I just have time to think that it's a strange thing to come over and say. But of course I understand the worry and know it's real. Even among my friends. A lot of what I write can be misunderstood - and is.
But he isn't finished.
He stands there in front of me, he can look me deep in the eyes, and he can feel that I'm actually present, that I want him and am both curious and interested, and then he says -
"...But here, out in reality, here I like you - A LOT!"
Followed by a big smile and a hug.
That made me really happy. And I've been thinking about it ever since, because it is nice with a flame and a supportive comment and a like in here, and I won't pretend it doesn't mean anything.
But something else happens when a human being shows up in reality. There's no thumb to press. There's only what you are, and that can't be edited afterwards.
So the question I took with me from there isn't really what he thought of me. It's what a human being actually responds to when it stands face to face with another.
I believe... and it is a belief -
That it's about whether you weave something beautiful around you, there where you are. Whether you light people up or pull the light towards yourself. Whether you make room, take the time to see them, share from a reasonably clean heart and leave the room a little more uplifted than you found it.
Whether what you are makes the world a better and more connected place to be.
It's my experience that this is usually what people mean when they say something like that. Although, for a man of his generation, it can of course also just mean that I had a nice set of clothes on.
But I don't think so.
And I'm not writing this to hold myself up as an example, because I'm not one.
What he saw wasn't mine. It's laid in all of us, deep inside where the Spark sits, and it shines through to exactly the extent we let it.
It is the Example.
What we, deepest down, want to be more of, because we know it is Good and True. It comes from somewhere you can orient yourself towards.
Likes can be counted.
The other thing can only be lived.
❤️🔥🪽
You can have a picture of the song we sang before we went home. Or - we're men, so "tried to sing" is probably more accurate... Not as pretty as when women do it. But the third verse... regardless of gender. It works all the way Home.
Happy Monday, friends ☀️
