Sometimes, it seems that life just wants to teach you a lesson. You know this because synchronicities abound. Driving around doing errands a few days ago, I happened to listen to an interview with the self-help guru Mel Robbins, who was expounding on her “Let Them” theory. As I understood it, she was exhorting us to pay no attention to what other people do or say – and to just follow our wisdom. There was a drop of stoicism in the message, and more than a little new-age me-ism. Nevertheless, I got to thinking about how often what I think (or do) is related to how I perceive and anticipate the reactions of other people. Once, a few years ago, I was explaining how I was doing something I didn’t want to do to satisfy a neighbor, when a wise friend of mine stopped the conversation to ask, “Don’t tell me at your age you’re still caring what other people think!” Good question. Why do we still care?
Later in the day, I was looking for a half-remembered passage in Spinoza and ran across Spinoza’s definition of ambition. Spinoza describes ambition as the “effort to do or omit something, solely in order that we may please men.” Spinoza’s definition of being free – the highest good – is for something to exist “solely by the necessity of its own nature and determined to action by itself alone.” In other words, the opposite of ambition. I thought I had turned in my ambition with my retirement papers, but maybe not.
And that got me thinking about Robert Frost’s “Choose Something Like a Star:”
It [the star] asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
Of course, Frost’s poem includes a reference [“Keats’ eremite”] to Keats’ “Bright Star,” which begins: “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—.” Keats is talking about love, but he could also be exhorting us to be steadfast to our own mind and not pulled or pushed by the last book we read or our intimations of how others feel.
Later, after meditating, I listened to a dharma talk by Gil Fronsdal, the theme of which was: “Don’t Make It Worse.” Life is full of dukkha (suffering), but we do not need to shoot the second arrow (blame, regret, fear, etc.) and make it worse. And, of course, when things are bad, one of the ways we make it worse is by worrying about what people will think. Buddhism talks about pairs of opposing winds that buffet our lives, one of which is praise and blame. The goal is to steady ourselves in the storm.
My more rational mind (the mind that Spinoza exhorts me to consult more often) tells me that my friend was right. Why should old people care what other people think? And “other people” includes neighbors, books, internet gurus, friends, or that critical-looking woman in my yoga class. We’ve lived through enough bad decisions, taken enough bad advice, and mistakenly followed the crowd enough times that we should certainly have learned our lesson. This does not mean that we do not care about anything – it just means that we should know better than to give our equanimity away to the whims of others. We should look inward for the answers.
Which brought me to this from Emerson and his essay on self-reliance, which is really what we are talking about here:
He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles…
I think that one of the reasons so many older people are drawn to write memoirs of one kind or another is to explore what it is that we have learned, what we know. And it is a worthwhile exercise if only for that purpose. I have given myself the task of reviewing my old journals for the same reason.
Being old means often looking weak and vulnerable to the outside world, and we often reflect that view back on ourselves. Lately, these is a ubiquitous meme on the net with post-menopausal women talking about how they “don’t care” about one thing or another. There are a lot of things I do care about, but it seems that outside approval should not be one of them. It is easier however to look for answers in a book or from someone else. But, we can do it. After all these years, we’re still here and we’ve got to trust that we have learned something. And that our own opinion is infinitely superior (at least for ourselves) than the person’s next door or the latest new-age guru.
Often, old folks have to stand up to the consternation and advice of their younger relatives. Holding our own is not easy, but it is often necessary. You might try my story, “Again and Again and Again,” for an example of this.
When I Come To Be Old 