Age is 'Just' a Number

 

I come from the generation that coined the phrase 'never trust anyone over 30'.

Heh.

Oh yes, I was once young.  And invincible.  Or so I thought.

Younger me could be heard saying things like 'Age is just a number; you are only as old as you think you are!'

Current me laughs, uproariously.

Yes, 'age' is 'just' a number, but life?  Ah, life.  

Right now I'm reading Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta and the First Peoples viewpoint on, well, everything.  I am pitched right back into my 20-something body trying to make head or tails out of The Dancing Wu Li Masters.  First Peoples have a great deal to teach current quantum physicists.  

The Dancing Wu Li Masters was a book bought by the high school library I worked at and where it was my job to process the books as they came in.  (Yes, those ancient card catalogue cards were hand typed by people like me for your browsing pleasure.)

Since I could also slide books out of the processing pile and into my bag to come home with me to read, I was intrigued and quietly went home with it.  Only to look askance at it because every chapter was labelled Chapter One.

What the hell?  I thought it was defective.  So I took a look to see if the first chapter had been repeated but no, each chapter had different content, but was still labelled Chapter One.  My first introduction to non-linear time, I suppose.

Curious, I began reading.  And tried to wrap my brain around the concepts.  It's a particle!  No, it's a wave!  No, actually it's *both*.  Er, um, what?

I'm feeling much the same way about Sand Talk and the First Peoples relationship with time.  No, not *to* time, *with* time.  And linear lines of times which are not.

I'm absorbing the concepts, slowly, and being able to connect them to the creation of textiles.  Because when you talk about the ultimate creation story, you are really talking about the creation of anything. Everything. So I see the linear parts of weaving, but I also see the non-linear, in a way that I never quite grasped before.

As for my 'age' - it is so much more than 'just a number'.  It is lived experience.  Knowledge.  Wisdom (one most fervently hopes).  

It is recognizing the continuing cycle of birth and death and regeneration as energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed into something...else.

First Peoples knowledge and quantum physics certainly agree on that.

As I teach others, I learn from them.  The circle of life continues.  Learning continues.  Growing continues.  Wisdom becomes deeper.  Wider.

Yunkaporta talks about 'yarning' with elders and I see my current foray into 'essays' as me 'yarning' with others - if they wish.  My stories.  They may live.  They may be ignored.  They may be absorbed into someone else's weaving practice.  But the cycle goes on regardless of what I do, or do not do.  If I want to see more positive/creative energy in the world, it is up to me to grasp some of it from the cycle of life and transform it into...something.

Right now that something is a series of tea towels.  In the end they will dry dishes, but right now they are also allowing me to explore the limitations of a weave structure.  To tweak it here and there.  To try this and that.  The 'order' of the tweaking is rather random, truth be told.  Rather like what happens in the universe as stars are born and die.  

We all follow the path of being born, living as best we can, with the resources we have available, dying and being re-born again.

So yes, my age is 'just' a number because the molecules I am made from are eternal.  When I leave this mortal coil, they will continue, transformed into something else.

We are stardust...