Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung October 3, 2024.
I have ceased grasping at turning 80 on October 12th. It is a fact to accept and nurture for what wisdom may develop from this crossing. Many of you have made the pilgrimage this far and have felt the changes that attend it.
What a moment to take stock, to ask some basic questions as I look back at a life that feels very full, meaningful and nourishing. With it arises areas of reflection that feel most crucial to entertain now.
I find in looking back that I was less in pursuit of happiness, more in pursuit of meaning and purpose. Certainly, biology is front and center, but more importantly are matters of soul that shape my identity. For in a reflective life meaning is always expanding; when it’s not, perhaps it signals a time to question and perhaps to abandon worn out patterns of thought and behavior.
I find that I am less invested in life’s clarity and more attuned to life’s mystery within each day. I like the word “enchantment” to convey this feeling of renewal. I also have slipped out of the harness of regretting the past and anticipating the future. I have traded those out for a deeper sense of awakening to the present moment.
I no longer strive for a sense of prestige and importance, but by a will to wisdom. It allows for responding to life, not reacting to it.
Here are a series of questions I want to contemplate further:
What have I been and am now in service of?
What sections of my life have I shirked responsibility for?
What wounds do I still carry from childhood and young adulthood as they shorten and narrow life’s possibilities?
What calls to me now as I saunter across the 80 threshold?
How many choices in my life were made by others and not me?
Have I followed story lines that were foisted on me by others or the society I live within?
Did I yield to them while pretending they were my own?
As one who believes that we all contain both a conscious and an unconscious, I wonder what remains beneath the floorboard of consciousness that is pushing up from below to be heard and seen?
My psychologist friend, James Hollis, suggests that all of us lack a deep sense of permission to lead our own lives. What have I not allowed myself to create that would deepen my sense of Self?
In my spiritual life, am I still living within a framework that is woefully outdated? Have I pursued a deepening relationship with the divine, the sacred and the sacrosanct that provides guidance every day if I am willing to allow it?
What have I used or abused in my life that medicated me such that I was insensitive to the voices of the soul that clamor for attention that could benefit me and through me, to others?
As a teacher of 60 years, did I use my subject matter to deepen and enlarge my own vocation into a more creative life and to share it with my students?
Where do I feel a sense of urgency, of something that is calling now, perhaps for the first time that I am morally obligated to ponder and activate?
What gives me joy, pleasure, and delight in being alive?
I end on a poetic note. One of my favorite poets, Rumi (1207-1273) was born in Afghanistan. In one poem he writes: “Be silent now. /Say fewer and fewer praise poems/Let yourself become living poetry.” The last line expresses how I have continued to live most fully.