Another Trip Around the Sun

“If it suddenly ended tomorrow, I would somehow adjust to the fall. Good times and riches and sons of a bitches, I have seen more than I can recall”.

Number 45 closed out and number 46 started with a 59 mile bike ride with the wifey. At the end of the week, on my birthday, I backpacked with my 16 year old and and then rode with my 13 year old and my wifey.

A lot of weird things have happened in five years. Covid, a shift in my faith and shift in my perspective. It is felt that truly, I am heading towards the second half of the experience and with this brings an awareness of self that was not present before. Our second daughter graduated from high school this year and for the first time in 20 years, we will only have two kids at home. The eldest is a junior in college.

What is time? “According to my watch, the time is now, past is dead and gone, don’t try to shake it, just nod your head, breathe in, breathe out, move on”

In Buddhism, the notion of impermannece is the notion of constant, continuous change. In Western philosophy, Heraclitus insisted that ever present change is the fundamental essence of the universe. He is famously known for saying that “no man ever steps in the same river twice”.

I like to make the old joke, “I do not know how to act my age, I have never been _____ before”. One must life each day this way. You really do not know how you will really act in the moment and if you continously act as you always do, never pausing to consider where you are, you run the risk of missing an experience or even worse, creating a rut in your life. I was once told by a supervisor, the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Too often, we want to live in the past or even try and mourn what we should have done; this is developmental problem for older folks. But, like the Calypso poet says, we must recognize the past is dead and gone. It informs our current and future positions, but we must not cling, for this brings us suffering.

There is a lot of serenity walking a long a forest trail. As one get’s older, there is a lot of angst and serenity in the process. I hope to lean into serenity. It is my hope that through the upcoming storms of the aging process and the memories of what should have been, that I find the “menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid”.