Winter Seed Catalog Moon
There is a sweetness in aging that comes unanticipated and for that reason even more 
welcome and surprising. The races have been run. The stakes won or lost. Now there is a peace, Kate and I growing old together. Of course we still have dreams and goals, but they have taken their proper place, the place they could have taken all along had we been awake.
Life never has a ribbon for your worth; we only worry that it does. And that instead of of a blue ribbon we’ll get the honorable mention, or good sport award, or the congeniality award. The truth is he who dies with the most toys still dies, no matter what the brave bumper sticker on your BMW might say.
Life values life, values living toward enrichment for yourself and others. No, not that kind of enrichment. The other kind. Where your work engages all of you, stretches you, challenges your talents, takes you into new territory. Where love lays your life down alongside others, so that, as Camus has said, this trip to death might be just a little more comfortable. Or, as the millenials have it, so that life will suck less.
Turns out age can strip away the detritus from those insecure parents, those overly ambitious teachers and mentors, that eager super ego and set you free. Of course, yes, you can always have this. At any age. Yes. But age can slide it onto your table unannounced, no fanfare, just a quiet, hey, you’re fine just the way you are.
I’ve been thinking about a couple of things in this regard. The golden years is one. It’s true, these are the golden years. Never thought it was true. Now I know.
The second thing is heart. As in, at heart I’m a… Or, I know this by heart. I’m putting it in my thinking box alongside home. Something to bring out now and then and ponder. When you say casually, at heart I’m a…, pay attention. You have just offered yourself self-knowledge.
In these golden years we become what we are at heart. Or at least we can. Let it be so for you.
Charlie,
I like your reflections on the golden age. That we might be awake to the blessings of love, friendship, life, joy. Then we can say at heart I am fulhearted. I.e. my heart is full.
At heart… I am… at home. At Home in my heart. Perhaps this is the essence of the journey. Perhaps we come, at this time of life, to the place all of those early guardians coaxed us to leave. “Figure it out, boy! Get a move on! Plan a career! Find out the answers!” It’s enough to exhaust us. And so we are. Many of us have spent the apochryphal 40 years in the wilderness only to awaken to the knowing that the compass we were told to follow is broken… always has been.
I suspect that’s the reason that one doorway to the heart is labelled “despair”. It’s the entry used by many wise ones, though they don’t know it as they enter.
I honor the wisdom teachings which instruct that there is no such thing as “time”, no such thing as an hour, a day, or year, there is only “NOW”. As much as I would like to say “Happy New Year, Charlie!”, I obvioulsy can’t.
I WILL say: “HAPPY NEW NOW”! These NOWS are good to spend in the heart!
Blessings!