The Beauty of Ageing
- Tuesday, 8 July 2008
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marianne williamson
*********Get £2.00 off Marianne's book The Age of Miracles (rrp £9.99). Call Hay House on: 020 8962 1230 and quote 'Prediction Marianne offer' ****************
Q Many Prediction readers are mothers trying to juggle childcare with careers. They never feel like a good enough mum or a good enough worker. How can they feel more balanced?
“I have been working at my career for 24 years and my daughter just turned 18. So I’ve had an intensive experience of both motherhood and a career. From where I am now I look back and I regret every moment I spent away from my daughter before the age of five. Experience has taught me that what the Jesuits say is true, “Give me a child before the age of five and he’s mine.
Every piece of information and every bit of input and stimulus that you give a child before the age of five becomes a fundamental programming of their psyche for the rest of their lives. When I look back on that now I feel that it’s almost ridiculous that anything, any career or anything at all could be more important than that.I value my career and consider it a great blessing and a great privilege but I see raising a child as the most extraordinary function, the most extraordinary mission.
Motherhood has been devalued in our society mostly because it doesn’t carry an economic price tag. It’s up to us not to run from motherhood, because we were co-opted by a society that undervalues it. We must reclaim the importance of being a mother; socially, politically, on every level. I’m not saying that people who aren’t mothers don’t have an amazing life. But I don’t think there is anything more amazing you can do. So if I had a young child today, I would be putting limits on my work, not time with my child.”
Q It’s hard to ignore those ideals that we’re fed through the media; that we should have perfect children, relationships, houses and look like supermodels...
“From a spiritual perspective it’s a mistake to think that anything from outside yourself can give you happiness. Whether it’s a child, a career, a mate or anything else. From the perspective of my book, A Course on Miracles, happiness is a decision that we make.
There are people who have all those things that the world says should make them happy and yet they’re not. And there are people that have none of those external things you’re told will make you happy and yet they are.
From a spiritual perspective, happiness comes from doing God’s will. Which means happiness comes from being as open-hearted as you possibly can in any given moment. Standing in integrity, standing in excellence, standing in compassion. The intention to be good and do good becomes an emotional tenor of life that provides happiness. But don’t get me wrong. Even happy people have sad days.”
Q You have to have the sad days to appreciate the good days, right?
“I don’t know about that. But I do think that by having sad days I do have gratitude about happiness that I didn’t have before. But I don’t want to devise anything that ever makes me think darkness or unhappiness is ever necessary.When spirituality is just off in the corner somewhere, along with career, children, partner and happiness, then you’re not allowing spiritual principles to infuse your life. When you come to realise that it’s your relationship with your primary source, your divine source, that brings you happiness, then you start to appreciate everything.
If I said anything that anything other than being here with you right now gives me happiness then it leads me not to be fully in this moment. If I thought career brings me happiness or I though I have to succeed in my career to be happy, that would tempt to be in a relationship with you that might be a little bit exploitative, suddenly I’m trying to get something from you. In which case I can’t be happy, right? The only way to be happy is that in any given moment you see something very simple going on. Otherwise you’re struggling, you’re grasping, you’re trying to control – you can have the biggest house, all this wonderful stuff, but your soul will be in turmoil.
The new spirituality takes the line that the old religious systems had presented us with a notion of God that lead us to believe that God demands suffering. So we’re put in this potion that we have to ask ourselves, do I want to serve god or do I want to be happy? Like there’s a choice to be made but the new spirituality makes you realise that to serve god is the only way to be happy. Because to serve god means to give love in any given moment. Only love brings happiness. But we take that line too often – I need a man to love me, I need a child to love me, no, no, no, it’s the love we give not he love we get that makes us happy.”
Q Is it better to work on your own happiness or to make other people happy?
“What I wrote in A Course in Miracles explains that ultimately we realise there is no world outside us. What you just said posits a place, a place where you stop and I start. My physical eyes say you’re there and I’m over here. But in my spiritual eyes there’s no place where your spirit stops and mine starts. We’re like two waves in an ocean.
Ultimately you have to understand that it’s all the same, whatever I’m giving to you, I am giving to myself. That’s what karma is. So only if I am giving you love can I receive it. It’s because I want to be happy that I want to make you happy - it’s better for me! If I’m going to blame, judge or control you then I’ll feel blamed, judged and controlled.”
Q Are you saying that happiness comes from you in the first place? Maybe that’s hard for people because it’s so different to the world we live in where if you give things away you have less of them.
“It has to be given. You have to learn the spiritual perspective. In spirit, I only have what I get to give away. I only get to keep what I give away. I only get love if I give it. I only get happiness if I give it. Feel supported if I give support. Forgiven if I forgive. So the idea of looking for happiness in myself first is a delusion. There is no self, you’re relating to self with a small ‘s’ without realising that we’re all part of self with a big ‘S’, all part of the same Self. I can’t get to one-ness from a perspective of separation.”
Q Do you wish you had all the answers?
“I think God has the answers and that we have them in any moment that we choose to listen. Each and every one of us had all the answers but we pretend that we don’t. The answer is to live in any given moment from the most openhearted perspective that we possibly can. That’s the answer with a capital ‘A’. Love each other.
The ego mind tries to make it more complicated than it is. Sometimes we have the answer and it’s not that we don’t have it, it’s that we don’t like the answer. Sometimes you don’t like what someone’s doing and the answer is to forgive that person, to be kinder to that person or to stand up to them, not procrastinate, not be lazy, to be the best you can possibly be. Take responsibility for your life... we have those answers!"
Q By responsibility do you mean for the greater good as well as personal responsibilities?
“Look at the planet! People are running around wondering what to do. But we know the answers: feed the children, look after the Earth. The issue is that we get all complicated about whether or not, or how, we’re going to do it. We don’t take responsibility. We think it’s going to take too much time or more likely, too much money.”
Q In The Age of Miracles you wrote about re-enchanting yourself and discovering some new passions...
“The physical demands of age demands that you slow down a bit, and at first this is shocking. But for me I look back at my younger days and see I made mistakes I wouldn’t have made if I had been more contemplative. I see the speed of my youth. But just because you move around doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere. You lived life so fast you couldn’t appreciate what you had.So what I feel now is that because nature demands I slow down, it actually supports me in being more reflective.
I think things through more. Like what we were talking about earlier, happiness doesn’t come from accumulating more stuff you think will make you happy, it comes from appreciating the stuff that you have. But when you’re moving too fast and trying to get more, you don’t see what you have.”
Q Does this mean we shouldn’t expect some sort of midlife dilemma?
“I think there is a level of crisis but this is about turning a crisis into a process. And that does involve losing passion for the things you’re no longer passionate about.
I want to show you this quote from Carl Jung, ‘We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of the morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.’ The things you were passionate about when you were young no longer apply. But you have to move through that and that’s where new passion emerges.”
Q Do you spend more or less time thinking about the future as you get older?
“On one hand, you think that what happens 50 years from now should matter even less because you won’t be here. But it doesn’t work like that. The less time you have left, you really realise what human suffering is. You become passionate about future generations. You become passionate about turning the planet around.
The planet today is like the Titanic heading towards the iceberg. If you just look at the probability factor from human history based on rational analysis – we’re on our way to disaster. We’re in denial and it’s the job of this generation now to turn the probability factor into a possibility factor, and that is what you become passionate about when you are a conscious, mature person.”
Q What advice can you give to those of us worried about getting old and ugly?
“Don’t plan on getting old and ugly! People can age magnificently. Does it take more work? Absolutely. But you’ve seen those women of say, 70, walking down the street and they have it going on. It can be done. There are seasons of life and winter is beautiful, just in a different way. Recently a man who was interviewing me asked what it was like to be in the autumn of my life. I said, ‘Well I don’t have so many leaves on my tree now but the ones I do have are a lot more colourful!’ You don’t have to be young to be fabulous.”
