If We Bring Forth What's Within Us, It Will Save Us

I've decided to tell my unvarnished truth to everyone

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Some people hold their private thoughts close to their chest; others are spillers.

I’m a spiller.

There’s a trail of beans wherever I go. I used to be critical of spillers, but now I know it’s better to spill it out than to hold it in.

Holding our stuff inside can be harmful to our psyches. Yes, spillers are annoying sometimes, but a certain amount of spilling is necessary if you want to be authentic.

I have decided to be an open book in my remaining years. Old age is difficult, probably the most difficult time most people ever face. I want to reveal what old age is like from one senior’s unique view. I have decided that if something is interesting to me at 81, it will be interesting to many other seniors.

This has proven true so far. The comment section of my essays tells the tale. People are resonating with what I write.

In my last essay, I wrote about discovering that I probably have REM Sleep Behavior Disorder. Normally, our bodies are blocked from physically acting out our dreams. In REM disorder, something is haywire, and we act them out. Dreams can be a wild, funhouse of strange happenings, like a movie chase scene, for instance.

With REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, if I am being chased in a dream, I might lunge to escape someone and actually leap out of bed onto the floor. This has happened to me two times in less than six months. It has never happened before.

As a writer, I felt I had to bring this out, not be embarrassed by it as if it makes me a less-than-perfect person. This sleep disorder is one of my truths, and I have a choice to hide it or bring it forth. And when I brought it forth, my readers opened up and told me about their experiences with the disorder.

One man woke up from a dream in which he was choking an assailant, to find he was choking his little pet dog. Many described yelling and flailing their arms, scaring their spouses. Opening up about my experience permitted them to do it too. And reading their comments was helpful to me. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone.

Seniors are hungry for insight into aging. They know whether I’m real or whether I’m using AI. They know when something feels off, like slightly rancid olive oil.

I read a lot of writing these days that seems off, nearly perfect writing, but slightly removed from reality. It’s the menu and not the actual meal. Only humans can experience the meal. The missing ingredient in AI is a beating heart and a lively consciousness.

Let’s say Marina and I are sitting at the beach, watching an amazing sunset. AI can write beautifully about that — but it can never experience the sunset. It can only describe it by drawing on what humans have said about sunsets in the past.

In Zen, there is an often-used metaphor about words: “A finger pointing at the moon.” The moon is reality. Words are fingers pointing at reality. We can become so fascinated by the fingers (words) that we don’t see the reality. We are made of lived experiences — AI is made of fingers.

People can get bored with a relentless spiller, so I have to be careful to make sure my writing is relatable to people, not just a diary entry. There is an old phrase called “Spilling the Tea.” It is usually defined as sharing gossip, juicy news, or revealing a secret. That’s not the kind of spilling I want to do, the kind you find on social media or TMZ.

My definition of Spilling the Tea is Spilling the T.

And the T stands for truth. If I want people to read my personal essays, they have to be true. Readers can smell a phony coming 20 miles down the pike. When they read AI writing, they know something is off. Something’s rotten in Denmark.

There is a quote from Jesus that has become popular among writers and artists, regarding creativity. It carries a deep meaning for me. The following is from translator Marven Meyer from his book, The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings Of Jesus.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Whether or not you are a Christian, this is powerful. What it means to me is that if I want to be a truly creative writer, I need to be transparent. I need to spill the beans. If I am not transparent, I won’t be able to reveal the many truths about being old. I won’t be able to really connect with readers.

Truths about aging emerge from old souls.

If I am unwilling to reveal myself, no one will read me. This is why AI won’t work for writers. I don’t want to reveal 100 percent of myself. I honestly can’t. I leave aspects of myself out. But I try to make sure what I do reveal is the truth as I know it.

Old age is no joke — it’s deadly serious.

And old age is not a medical condition — it’s the natural, healthy continuation of youth and middle age. I don’t write about the science of aging. I don’t have the qualifications to do that, and that’s not what I want to write about anyway.

I write about the lived experience of old age, as you are, but I am not writing only about old age.

Aging is the setting in which I write.

Within it, I write about deeper themes such as:

• How we suffer less from aging than from our ideas about aging.

• The surprises of growing old.

• How can we find freedom inside unavoidable change?

• Keeping our sense of humor and curiosity in the face of decline.

• The tension between what society says aging means and what it actually feels like.

We, seniors, know what aging feels like. Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s painful. And sometimes we suffer. We need to be conscious of the entire spectrum of aging: the good and the bad. I bring that forth.

The more I bring you the truth from my experience, the more I learn from you as you feed back your experience to me. We are part of the aging community. The forgotten generation, from the undiscovered country of old age.

I think this is our time. For me, it’s like 1957, when I was 13, when Rock and Roll exploded, and I had my own music. Every day was filled with discoveries, and I was more mindful than I have ever been. I was truly happy. But I didn’t know it.

Now, nearly 70 years later, I feel like I’m 13 again. I have my own community of seniors, and I have taken my place as a writer among them, and I feel more mindful and happy than in 1957. That may sound preposterous, but it’s true for me.

This is our time. The elderly population grows every year.

We scare experts who call us the silver tsunami, as if we are a menace. But things are changing. The new Netflix series, The Burroughs, has been called “Stranger Things — But with Old People” by one reviewer. I’m watching it and loving it. It’s science fiction, but full of satire about the Senior Industrial Complex. It’s science fiction and a bit corny, but there is a message hidden in the show about how we are treated.

When major filmmakers start making films about us that depict us as confident, intelligent, wise people standing up for ourselves, we can know our time has come.

We old souls shouldn’t be afraid to share how it feels to be a senior. To our friends, our family, and everyone we meet. Because when we bring forth what is within us, it will save us. What we keep hidden will destroy us.

We need to shine our light.

Gary
June 2026