I remember being in junior high (that's what we called it back then) when some man came over to our house one night to talk to my parents about funeral planning.
Ewwww, I thought.
I am not quite sure when I woke up to this new age, but I most certainly am there. Oh, I haven't contacted a funeral planner and I have yet to buy a small plot of land (I keep begging Mark to just toss me over the fence some dark night--it's only a three-block walk, after all), but I most certainly have arrived on the other side of that "Ewwww" place of my youth.
Suddenly, these are my friends undergoing the knife, my friends who are announcing their retirements, my friends whose names are appearing in the obituary column.
It seems I no longer have the luxury of vague acquaintances.
But all is not lost. I know this.
In fact, maybe just the opposite is true. Maybe I'm finally at the point where I can take the helm of my middling ship, assuming I've got the nerve. How appropriate that, this morning, a line from t.s. eliot's "Ash Wednesday" comes to mind: "Teach me to care and not to care." Such an undertaking can only come with having lived a bit, I think.
Consider my small revelation of a month ago, when I realized my family would be fine if I made but half the salary I make today. The mere thought had a profound effect on my state of mind, and I felt immediately unburdened by circumstances I had found myself in. Are these circumstances immediately out of my control? Maybe. But it turns out that I still possess some control, after all. And it might be the most important kind of control--I still have the choice to live differently.
Even as I type this, I feel the familiar warmth that comes with the mere possibility of change. It's only 6:30 in the morning, yet I've already been serenaded for an hour by the insistent song of Robins, so full of hope and possibility that they couldn't wait for the sun to begin their singing. Ah, and here comes intercession of Cardinal song.
I welcome these avian flash mobs. The steadiness of nature--its ability to show up, transformed, year after year after year--is a welcomed reality in this new age I find myself in. That this transformation also is a surprise, despite its constancy, is a bonus to me, as well.
And so, despite the gravitational forces that literally are bringing me down, despite the occasionally discouraging news--both personal and global--I manage to wake with hope, knowing that because of my age, rather than despite it, I am not stuck.
Indeed, I am freer than ever.
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