Midlife Obituary
In a few weeks, the Fall Ango term will start at Dharma Rain Zen Center. In Soto Zen, an ango is a three month period of more intense training: meditation, study, and work practice. Typically, there’s a fall ango and spring ango, with “rest” periods in winter and summer.
During the term some students elect to participate in a term student program, which creates a container for practice—a cohort of fellow students, a structure of regular retreats, the creation of term vows, and regular meetings with a teacher. We are asked to reflect on our life story, our karmic conditioning, what has led us to this term, and what fuels our vows.
Of course, the beauty of this exercise is that each term, the story changes. Maybe not a lot. But change is constant and learning how to accept this Noble Truth is a part of why we show up to this practice. In preparation for this fall, I’ve been reading through past life stories and vows I’ve written and noticing what arises and still resonates and what has fallen away. It’s been helpful to notice.
This morning I started writing my updated life story. It’s still the same life, of course. The events haven’t changed. But my approach is different. There’s been a lot of talk lately about Quiet Quitting, with lots of astute observation and analysis of the politics and language of this phenomenon, which I will happily leave to others—I don’t think I have much new to add to that conversation. I feel the impulse though, to defend myself a bit against the imagined response to this post: “It sounds so morbid, Lena. You’re only forty. You sound like you’re just giving up on life, on everything you’ve worked so hard for. You’ve been sounding like such a Debby Downer lately.”
Which is exactly why this midlife obituary is so needed. I am not suicidal. Maybe a little depressed. But if you aren’t depressed these days, you’re probably not paying any attention to the world, which is its own problem. To be connected to your humanity is to be connected to the vast, unending suffering of the world, and I don’t think I need to point out the mountains of suffering going on as we speak.
Look, I’m a midwife. Whether actively catching babies or not, my every day orientation to the world is one of tending to the liminal spaces of birth and death. I hang out in those shady places where the veil between life and death is thin. Maybe today you’re not ready to read a midlife obituary, let alone consider yours. That’s ok. T’ake your time. When you’re ready, I offer mine.
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Where to start with a life narrative?
Most people start with birth, or maybe the birth of their parents or immediate ancestors. I don’t really know anything about my birth parents, or grandparents, or theirs before them, which leaves me free to imagine my own lineage. Over the years it has been one of my favorite pastimes, imagining this line of ancestors.
But it leaves some gaps in my life story. So today, perhaps, I’ll change it up and work backwards.
If I had to write my obituary, it might start like this:
“For her first forty years, she strived and strived and strived, and she got very good at it. It became a survival tactic. And it nearly killed her. It took her forty years to finally start to learn the joys of non-striving, the liberation of rest, the gentle homecoming of good enough, the elegant wisdom of right effort. She marked the passage of her fortieth year by setting down her striving and letting it know some boundaries needed to be set. She discovered she didn’t need it as much as she thought she did. She allowed herself a fallow year, a year of composting and fermentation. She noticed, with deep existential relief, that the world kept spinning on its axis and it did not matter that she did not cross a single item off her bucket list.”
The next lines might read: “This was a life marked by yearning: for meaning, for love, for connection, for a sense of purpose and belonging. She loved ritual, ceremony and story. More than anything, hers was a life filled with yearning for an answer to questions without fixed answers: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? She relished the art of crafting the Question. She once had a college professor ask her What is the one thing you must know before you die? And that question consumed her for years”.
This narrative of my life could easily be whittled down to a list of schools and teachers, favorite classes and subjects: poetry, art, history, geography, pedagogy, pickling and bread making, sign language, the Japanese art of kintsugi. Swing dance and QiGong. Bookmaking. Plant medicine. Microbiology, anatomy and physiology. Suturing lab and watercolor painting. So much knitting and sewing.
“She was fueled by an insatiable hunger to learn,” it might read, highlighting my unruly collection of degrees and often unchecked impulse to sign up for another class. “Yet, no matter how delectable the feast of knowledge, there was a hunger in her belly that was never quite satiated.”
Oh, for sure, this obituary would cover some obligatory basics: “Born in Korea, to a people known for their resilience, wit, and tendency toward the dramatic. Adopted, raised in flat lands of Minnesota on tuna hotdish and a healthy dose of repressed emotion and Catholic guilt. Escaped to Massachusetts for college, then journeyed to the Pacific Northwest. Fell in love with the mountains, the thousand shades of green, wild ocean, and a gentle man. Got married, bought a house. Gave birth a plump, charming baby who was a mirror of DNA she had never experienced before. Seeing herself in someone else for the first time would heal a wound she didn’t know she carried.”
The list goes on: “Acquired said collection of degrees. Became a teacher. Became a doula, became a midwife. Started a business, or two. Dreamed up five more. Joined every committee. Served and served some more. She was thorough and attentive to the details of tasks. Also wildly impatient and notoriously judgmental, although skilled at masking both.”
“And what she was learning at the time of her death,” this midlife obituary would conclude, “is that it is not just ok, but necessary to let one’s world get very small sometimes. She was learning the occupational hazards of unchecked ambition and starting to make friends with the fact that she was moving into the second half of her life, a softer, looser half. She was relishing all the small ways in which she could let herself die and be reborn moment by moment. This second half was going to be filled with mostly very ordinary days and this gave her great relief and quiet pleasure.”
