I'm Nobody, Who Are You?
After spending 8 hours yesterday shredding so many files that I burned up my little shredder, filling 3 giant recycle bins with the detritis of past Meri's, I applied this morning for Social Security.
And I'm noticing, as the morning goes on, what it means to me... to tell my government that I intend to "stop working" now.
On the one hand, it's ludicrous to pretend it's logically possible for me to "stop working." I can't stop working! I have no savings to live on and no benefactor family or friends. How would I ever live without "working?" Impossible! The tiny amount I'm entitled to receive back from 35 years of social security contributions will barely pay the rent on the land beneath the manufactured home I'm renovating to live in. No, I won't ever stop "working." I will be doing things for other people in exchange for money, goods or services until the day someone recycles my organs and cremates the body.
On the other hand, to make the application for Social Security today is, in quite a beautiful way, to make a public declaration of full surrender to what is. Surrender to my age, to my maturity, to how tired I am of keeping up appearances, to my real human need for support as I continue to age, to my "right" to relax a bit and simply enjoy my life - at last.
It's time for this surrender. The ego's still hanging on - like the shreds of a not-quite-shed-locust-shell - but the Truth of who I really am has finally begun to dawn on me. And thatTruth has taken the power out of the knee-jerk reaction stream that's been driving my processes of "making a living" since I was 15. How wonderful that there comes a time in the life of U.S. citizens when we can deliberately link our intentional use of time to our inner spiritual journey towards Freedom - and receive a little of the money we've been required to save while we let others "borrow" our intentions for our time.
So, here I go: I'm stepping right off the cliff, just like the Fool, in full acknowledgement of the Truth. I'm not what I think, do or say - and I never have been. What a glorious Spring day to affirm the mystical genius of Emily Dickinson:
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

