But what am I for??

Those of you who’ve read the first few postings on this blog will know that I took voluntary redundancy last July from my job as a lecturer at a University in London, at the age of 56, (calculating that the redundancy sum would see me through to when I could start receiving my pension without too harsh a financial penalty.)

The opportunity to retire early came at an opportune time. I was so exhausted because of fibromyalgia, depression and heart problems, that I was seriously doubting I would manage to work through to 60. When I first gave up work I slept.  And slept.  Sometimes for 20 hours a day. It wasn’t what I had thought would happen; I’d envisaged that once I gave up work my energy would immediately start to come back, and those first couple of months were very frustrating. But then  I did start to regain energy. I started to learn to pace myself and, by early December I had joined a local choir and had started attending a fortnightly kabbalah meeting- both wonderful sources of mental and spiritual nourishment.

In January of this year, however, a financial problem, which had been unforeseen when I took voluntary redundancy (that of my husband also being made redundant), led me to consider going back to work part time. There was plenty of work  for what are known as ‘visiting’ or ‘hourly paid’ lecturers in my subject. And so, buoyed up by my increasing energy levels, I agreed to go into a University in the City of London and teach all day one day a week. Looking back now, I don’t think that decision was purely financial; I think I was also seduced by the notion of being wanted again, by contributing something to society that others thought was worth paying for.

It is easing our financial situation but, from the point of view of my physical, emotional and mental health, it is proving disastrous. I'd forgotten that even perfectly healthy lecturers my age would try to avoid doing 3 hours teaching with only one hour’s break before the next 3 hours, followed immediately by one hour of seeing students with individual queries. Within a fortnight I had to give up choir and kabbalah, and was not getting up out of bed at all the day after going into London.

To many of my friends and relatives, the solution was obvious: my health was more important than money. We’d learn to manage on whatever money we had. My GP, who for years had told me that there was nothing I could do about fibromyalgia other than pace myself, finally referred me to a specialist consultant in fibromyalgia/ chronic fatigue syndrome/ ME and he told me that he thought he could alleviate the symptoms of my condition, but not while I was commuting in and out of London during rush hour one day a week.

And yet,  and yet. I have a contract until the end of July which I do not intend to break, but saying no to offers of work for succeeding terms and semesters, from various sources, has proved to be profoundly difficult. You see, if I’m not working….. what am I for??

It’s not that I have identified so completely with my work persona that I don’t feel as if I exist unless I’m working (though I have had that problem in the past.) The problem is around what I really want to do instead, which I’m now very clear about. I want to know, I want to understand everything I can about the human condition, about human potential. I want to read every book I can lay my hands on about psychology, philosophy, spirituality, watch every programme on TV, attend every talk at the RSA, listen to every radio programme and join every internet group concerned with these topics. I know my understanding will necessarily be bounded by my own level of development intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, but it is hard to describe the pleasure I get from coming across a writer or speaker who makes sense of something that has hitherto been a puzzle, who resolves a paradox, who enables me to expand the area of my understanding, to see the bigger picture.

But isn’t this all just dreadfully self-indulgent? I didn’t think it was, when I could pass on some of the more relevant things I had come to understand to my students, but when I finally give up teaching for good, for the sake of my health, I no longer have that ‘justification’. Although I suppose it’s not so much justification I’m seeking, as doing something  with what I’ve learnt.

Do many people my age feel this?

In terms of justifying these pursuits,  I know I can use what I’ve learnt to decide how best to vote, and which shops to avoid if I don’t want to be exploiting other people or participating in cruelty to animals. I am slowly learning to balance discipline, boundaries and structure with tolerance and mercy. I hope I am learning how to live a better life for myself and the good of others generally.

I passionately want to avoid leaving this planet having taken more than I’ve contributed. This is not just because I have a son, who will probably have children of his own, and I don’t like to think of leaving them a degraded planet (I know of people who have chosen not to have children because of their concern about over- population). There is an even more basic force at work, which those of you who have read my earlier postings will know I put down to the imperatives within my soul (for those who haven’t, please see 'Honouring the Gods')

But here’s another thought. We all know that a wave of anger, or of love, or of any other emotion, is as real in terms of their force as a wave of the sea. Many of us know how the material world can hold on to emotions that seem to have soaked into the physical fabric – for example, the peacefulness within many places of worship, or the feeling we get when we walk into an unknown place that something dreadful has happened there. Some people claim that if you can get a certain critical number of people meditating within a certain geographical area, that area will enjoy a reduction in crime and various other positive outcomes, because the altered brainwaves of the meditators are not confined within their own brains. (For those who don’t know from earlier postings, this is not a blog for materialists, see my post "A Sense of Being Stared At"  .)

So, then, maybe what I’m learning and understanding  is not confined to my own brain? Maybe it doesn’t all disappear when I die? Perhaps by just making the effort to learn and understand, I’m boosting the general learning and understanding level within the local population? No man (or woman) is an island......