Things My Father Taught Me • Mary Morrell
When I was younger, I wondered why my mother became so curmudgeonly as she aged. Normally a happy, sweet, well-loved person, she began to lose her patience with people’s behavior and would react unexpectedly.
I worried that she would embarrass me in the checkout line of the supermarket by chastising the checkout clerk or embarrass a slow server when we stopped by the diner for lunch.
My mother was sometimes described as a “Pollyanna,” someone who saw everything in terms of sweetness and light. I began to believe that the change coming over her was founded in her realization that situations, and people, were not always as she believed them to be. She was frustrated, and hurt, by a truth for which she wasn’t prepared.
Aging is not easy. It brings physical challenges that may limit us in how we live out the precious time remaining to us. It can also bring unexpected wisdom which often forces us to face uncomfortable truths about ourselves and others. That can be hard, but the discomfort can also be an invitation to change.
It seems those who value this newfound wisdom and face those truths are those who tend to age with grace. They begin to appreciate seeing the world with genuine insight. They learn to align their actions with their deepest values and live with an understanding of who they are becoming, not just who they have been.
They have learned to live intentionally.
At its core, intentional living begins with awareness. When we take the time to evaluate our lives, we discover we often go through our days relying on habit, checking off the boxes on our to-do list, and fearing we will never be more than we are at this moment.
Intentional living wakes us up to the possibilities that are still ours. It means slowing down, making conscious choices about how we spend our time and energy, and paying attention to how our lives are impacted by what others say and do, as well as by what we say and do.
One of the most transformative expressions of intentional living is learning to listen well. True listening goes far beyond hearing words, so easily said but often lacking sincerity or truth. It is an art that requires two things – we need to stop talking and we need to quiet our ego.
Living intentionally through deep listening has the ability to change us.
On the one hand, as we focus less on ourselves and more on understanding others, our perspective widens. We become less reactive and more compassionate. Slowly, our inner lives become quieter and more grounded, shaped less by assumptions and more by understanding.
On the other hand, listening well enables us to set boundaries, to protect our spiritual and physical health, to place our trust in our own perceptions and intuition, and to value who we are as God’s creation.
It’s a process, and with any process there are ups and downs, success and failures, and questions, like, “Just how do I go about being intentional?”
I began the process, one day during prayer – prayer at that time being my whining and complaining to God about the stresses of my life. I would ask God questions, like, “Do you not see what is going on??” Or when faced with yet another crisis, I would simply respond, “Seriously??”
During these times of prayer, I never heard God speak to me in any way, until one morning when I was praying while stuck in traffic, I distinctly heard, “What is your root?”
Not exactly what I would have expected, but it led to a lot of reflection. I needed to remember that God, and nothing else, was my root, my “shoresh” in Hebrew Scripture – my source, and my life’s origin.
Now, trying to live with intention brings up one question in the moment of every choice: Where is God?
It’s a question worth asking.
Mary Morrell is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Spirit, the Metuchen Diocesan newspaper.