Uncharted waters,
Living life while letting go,
Now is all there is.
There’s always been a do-list on my desk, carefully dated and delineated in a spiral notebook. Some days, there have been 20 or more new entries. Periodically, I joyously strike a line through each accomplished task.
These days, there are fewer items on the do-list: backup the computer, make a physician appointment. Currently, a new spiral notebook is filling with phrases to ponder and meditations to remember… a new list for my future quiet moments.
Searching for the written ideas of others about aging, I find numerous books with eat-this, do-that advice, such as Rebellious Aging. These seem directed to the 50-year olds and 60-year olds struggling against aging. Of more interest to me are the more metaphysical, psychoanalytic writings of Kathleen Singh Downing and Helen Lukes. My current favorite is Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience, and Spirit by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Dr. Linda Thal. These authors see aging as a life cycle, a time of reflection, a transformation from do-lists to reflections, which is where I seem to be, while living life with joy.
These posts will thus be a mixture of life as I am living it and reflections on aging. I suspect that the ratio of “activities” to “reflections will change over time. Let’s see.
Uncharted Waters 