A One-Minute Elder

Let It Be

Let It Be

Elders allow themselves to be human. Allowing their humanity is what makes them Elders. Not because they’ve transcended the human condition, but because they’ve stopped arguing with it.

Allowing is not acceptance. Acceptance carries a subtle stance: this shouldn’t be here, but I’ll tolerate it. There’s a quiet resistance embedded in it, a negotiation with reality. A tightening.

Most have their anger, fear, and doubts, but they’re still attached to it, managing it, keeping it in check.

Allowing has no argument at all.

Nothing to fix. Nothing to manage. Nothing to hide.

What is present is permitted to be present—fully, cleanly, without commentary. Fear shows up? It’s here. Anger arises? It’s here. Self-doubt, irritation, grief, joy—they come and go without requiring justification or suppression. There is no effort to be “better.” Ther is no effort to resist.

Elders know, resistance causes persistence.

And by allowing, something unexpected happens.

From that absence of resistance, something stabilizes. Clarity returns. Reaction loosens its grip. You’re no longer consumed by what you feel, because you’re no longer fighting it. What is needed becomes visible without distortion.

That is what makes us Elders—not perfection, not composure, but the capacity to be fully human without being run by it.

We are complex beings. There is a human side and what people often call a spiritual side. The human side comes with the full package: insecurity, anger, pride, comparison, the inner critic, the need to be right, and the need to be seen. None of that disappears with age. If anything, it becomes more obvious.

Elders allow themselves to have all of it.

Spirituality, as it’s commonly pursued, often tries to rise above this—to quiet it, transcend it, outgrow it. But when you put too much weight there, something else happens. The human doesn’t disappear; it goes underground. It leaks out sideways—through judgment, superiority, quiet resentment.

Picture a seesaw.

On one side: your humanity.
On the other: your spirituality.

Weight too much in either direction, and the system reacts. Over-identify with the human, and you’re driven by reaction. Over-identify with the spiritual, and you disconnect from what’s real.

Elders don’t choose sides. They balance their seesaw.

Not by controlling it, but by allowing both to coexist. The anger is there, and so is the awareness of it. The fear is there, and so is the steadiness that holds it. Nothing is denied. Nothing is elevated above the rest.

This is mastery—not control, not suppression, but allowing.

Allowing is what keeps the system in balance. It integrates rather than divides. It brings the human and the spiritual into the same space, where neither dominates, and neither disappears.

And from that integration, a different kind of presence emerges.

Grounded. Unforced. Reliable.

An Elder doesn’t rise above being human.

They stand within it—fully—and are no longer moved around by it.

That’s the difference.