Life is a “total immersion” experience. From our first breath, we must learn to either sink or swim, to grow or die. Old age is a privilege granted only to some. Happy old age is a state achieved by fewer still.
This being my 64th birthday, a milestone generally regarded as marking the threshold of “old age,” I hope you will please indulge me as I share a few reflections about lessons learned in my own life.
The first is this: my life has not turned out as I’d imagined. In earlier years when I was experiencing episodes of loss, disappointment, self-loathing, and depression, I never imagined that life could turn out to be such a satisfying and happy thing as it is for me today. I think a major turning-point for me was when I realized that every moment of every day is an opportunity for transformative change, an opportunity to remake one’s reality as one wishes it to be. The transformation can be instantaneous. The catalytic key is accepting self-responsibility and understanding that we are free to create the lives we choose. Life is what we make it.
The second is this: we are each born into our particular lives and circumstances to learn specific lessons which were not learned in former lifetimes. Sophocles said that a man growing old becomes a child again. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning becomes young. The greatest thing in life is to keep our minds young. Learning is the mission and the work of our souls.
The third lesson is this: those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. Without love, the most important things can never be learned or experienced. Without love, life and change are meaningless.
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Groove of the Day
Wandervogel Diary 