Let the Rest of the World Roll By

 

Our time in our little Lake Michigan paradise is mostly about family gathering, but there are also many friends of my wife’s family who either live up here or summer up here and days are filled with their visits. The other night, seven of us gathered for an evening of singing and sing we did, for over two hours. Old folk songs, 60’s folk songs, rounds, show tunes, jazz songs and more and wasn’t that a delight! 

 

One of the songs that someone taught was a country tune by a singer named Jimmy Dean (not the actor) and besides it being a sweet tune, I love the lyrics.

With someone like you, a pal so good and true,
I'd like to leave it all behind and go and find.
Some place that's known to God alone,
Just a spot to call our own. 

We'll find perfect peace where joys will never cease
Out there beneath the kindly sky.
We'll build a sweet little nest somewhere out in the west
And let the rest of the world roll by.

 

Here in my third week of an authentic summer life, I’m settling into relaxing the busyness of my world-involved life. Giving myself over to just sitting and listening to the murmur or roar of the Lake Michigan waves, watching the sun’s slow descent into the waters each night, occasionally going down to the beach to look up at the starry sky. 

 

But still I’m checking e-mail every day, peeking into Facebook, making and checking off little lists of “things to do” to keep my active life moving forward. 

And then comes this song to remind me that I can start to let some of that go. Just sit on the porch and watch “the rest of the world roll by.” Not try to fix it or express my outrage or even comment on it. Just let it all roll by. The good, the bad and the ugly. Fix my gaze on the sea, sand and sky and not the screens. 

 

Ancient Hindu thought has a way to talk about the various life stages, dividing it into four categories. As noted in a Website called Spiritual Seniors: 

 

1)   The first stage is brahmacharya, the period of the student, when the young learn discipline, faith, and knowledge. 

2)   The second is grihastha, the householder, devoted to marriage, family, work, and social responsibility. 

3)   The third, vanaprastha, arrives when one has fulfilled those duties and begins to step back from worldly obligations. 

4)   The fourth, sannyasa, is the life of renunciation, when a person seeks union with the eternal.
 

That third stage is often described as leaving society and literally living in the forest. But many see the forest as a metaphor—"a loosening of ties, a move toward simplicity, a life oriented around prayer and reflection rather than gain. People in this stage may still live with family, still advise children, still play a role in society. But the center of gravity shifts. The outward call of responsibility is balanced by the inward call of wisdom. A person is no longer defined by striving, but by seeking. No longer measured by conquest, but by clarity.”

 

The third stage in the West would be “retirement.” But instead of golf or pickleball or cruises (or alongside them), it’s marked by that more inward reflection than outward activity. 

 

And so this song, which sings to me in this brief life as a forest (lake) dweller. I still very much am playing a role in society, but can feel the center of gravity shifting in a welcome kind of way. I’ll keep speaking out and offering my perspective on healing a broken world, but I’m also happy to take some of the weight of the earth off of my shoulders, sit on the deck at sunset and “let the rest of the world go by.”