Bumped into an old friend yesterday. He was working, and asked if I still was. When I mentioned that I was looking for work as a bookkeeper, he said, “How old are you?! You’re in the ninth inning [of your life]!” The implication being that I shouldn’t be concerned about working at my age (67)!
Ten years ago a friend told me to stop fretting about work as “my tracks were running out”, as if I were about to pull into the final station on the journey of life.
Yes, unless we’re living off the grid, we all need money – but a job provides more than that: a sense of responsibility, purpose, contribution, value.
Which brings me to the yoga bit: in classical yoga, there’s a concept that the last thing we need to lose attachment to before realizing our true nature is our ego (not the “I am smart, fat, old, etc.” level of ego, but the much more subtle sense of our own individuality: simply the “I am”) – because beneath that aspect of our multilayered energetic tangible self lies consciousness.
Classical yoga is about identifying with the latter: our intangible awareness rather than our tangible body/mind. As the expression goes, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience” – not the other way around.
How does that tie back to longevity and employment? When we see ourselves as “real” [yogis see our immutable, eternal awareness as “real” because unlike our temporal, perpetually-changing physical world, our awareness literally never changes – ever], we’re able to let go of attachments to the “unreal” world around us that our senses, desires and fears naturally get caught up in.
It’s no wonder that some people shake their heads and turn away from this kind of talk. Someone would have to be crazy to believe thoughts, emotions and sensations aren’t “real” (my first yoga teacher told me that over 20 years ago – and it’s taken me practically since then to understand what she meant) but if you see it, even for a moment, it can relieve you of a lifetime of stress, anxiety, worry – about things like work and death – and that kind of freedom is priceless.
Would I like to work? Sure. Am I concerned about my own mortality and that of the people I love? Of course. But without the perspective outlined above, I’d be losing a lot more sleep about those and a million other things!
May you find true peace in this lifetime. If you’re looking for it, seek out a guy revered and honored by classical yogis: Patanjali.
God bless.
Want to learn more about classical yoga? You know where to find me.
So happy you are still practicing and teaching. If only I had books for you to keep.
Thank you Jess. It’s been a long time since my first yoga class when I asked you if you were enlightened, and how long it took! God bless
In China there is actually more than a thousand way to write the word “longevity”. I suppose no one knows them all, but in every temple or palace I visited there was a huge stress on this idea. Along with it there was the same stress about the word “serenity”. So I suppose what we can learn is that serenity and longevity are connected and I wonder if there are also a thousands way to write it!
Thank you Max. There probably is a correlation between longevity and serenity – though the former is largely not within our control. Everything else being equal, it makes sense that the person who fosters serenity in their life outlives the person without defenses against life’s all-too-frequent stresses and suffering. May you find true bliss when you need it most.