The grass is greening up and the walking trails are looking inviting. Need my injection of spring!
A few more achy muscles to loosen up. Oh, right! Another birthday just passed.
Whatever our situation is, or is getting to be, it is well to treat life as a big canvas, someone said. Throw as much paint onto it as you can.
But the paint must be for the painting itself, and not to score points or make some kind of gain or impression. Haven’t we had enough of things being considered valuable to us because of their utility for financial gain?
The addition of years to life can be a major downer or it can be filled with further adventure. The key is in not having forgotten how to begin learning something new.
A deeper or philosophical way to approach the idea may be through what Wei Wu Wei, the writer once wrote……
“Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9% of what you think,
And everything you do,
Is for your self…….
And there isn’t one.”
The thing we call our ‘self’ is what we have altered or re-defined ourselves to be like, to fit into the world as useful and to accumulate stuff….and with that comes self-imposed boundaries. It is like mis-defining the judgment that results in an unnecessary imprisonment. How come? Mostly, because we have forgotten who we are or were. There was a time when society took over and told us it needed someone to be another cog in the wheels of commerce. We weren’t doing much else that day, so we volunteered and that became our life.
And now? It doesn’t matter at what age we re-discover or remember our true character, the one with which we entered this world. Here we are, and it is the perfect time to throw paint on the canvas.
As an aside, remember when, as a young child, our family and friends laughed at our attempts to express our originality? Our essence? Our core passions? They preferred we do something more in tune with a consumer-oriented society? Some of the things we thought we might do to enrich life was met with the standard, “Why not get a real job?” Unfortunately, we did.
Here we are again! This time we may be told to act our age. Or rather, it is expected that we will act our ‘old’ age, including all the little foibles that are part of that menu.
But I can still throw the paint, even if I need to stand a little closer to the canvas, or may prefer to be a bit wilder in colors. Blue sky and green grass? Who said so?
We have no further interest in the assessments of those who may have earlier criticized our desire for verve, or a personal flamboyance.
No. At this stage in a life no longer satisfied with societal judgments and evaluations about how seniors must act, amid lists of health issues that a maturing body will be experiencing, we have learned that we need to express our soul in its excesses. Modesty is for monks!
Some of my friends say that they are having problems with their memory. Sure, but there is an upside to that one. There is a huge benefit in having a memory that seems less proficient at holding onto things of little significance…..like all those rightly-held opinions of everything and everyone. Mostly, the reasons for holding on to those opinions seem to be fading into the mists, easily replaced by new less judgmental experiences.
That is all a huge relief since there is so much energy expended in clutching onto those years of opinions.
As long as we keep being true to ourselves, and begin allowing others to be true to their own selves, those others can be exactly who they are and who they are not!
Say that again. ‘Can be exactly who they are and who they are not?’ If this is how we feel about someone, isn’t that one of the more important definitions of love?
Now, that’s the conversation that really matters!
Rich