Glorious sunlit day.
I feel the rays being absorbed.
They warm my body.
The rays flow over and through me.
They create heat in my body.
I feel alive.
The sun energizes me.
It refreshes me.
I feel alive.
I begin again.
I own my breath.
I am renewed.
I am alive.
I am grateful.
I have had a lot of thoughts rumbling through my brain the last several weeks.
One which has reverberated around quite a bit is the passage of time. A couple weeks ago, this realization hijacked my mind as I was tried to clean out a closet of children’s toys which dated back to when my oldest was 5 or 6 years old. The closet stacks of old VHS tapes. Arthur. Rugrats. Barney. Even the dreaded TeleTubbies. I hesitated toss ing them out. Even though they were simply taking up space. I am not even sure we have a working VHS player. Nor could I tell you the last time we even watched a VHS tape (or give you a reason why we should).
I thought about why it was bothering me so much to depart with these tapes. My kids surely did not want them. My wife wanted them out.
It was an acknowledgment. An acknowledgment that time had indeed past. It is not returning. A little part of me had died….but had it really?
It is still a part of me. It is a part of who and where I am.
We live in today’s instant. The past is already past. Who cares. We have lived it and enjoyed it.
New adventures lie ahead. If I am open to them.
Keep to the process. Think. Live in the moment. It’s the only on of which we are assured.
The tapes went out that day to the dump. I don’t miss them.
I sketched out these thoughts about six weeks ago, on a beautiful fall sunny day in New Jersey.
Surrounded by falling leaves in my Zen Grotto. Leaves peacefully falling to the ground around me. The ground was covered that day like the first snowfall we would soon have. Ankle deep in some places.
The quiet of the leaves falling through space was soon penetrated by a leaf blower in a neighboring yard. Actually, an army of leaf blowers. An ironic counterpoint to the peacefulness of the falling leaves. The suburban homeowner’s weapon of mass destruction against the falling leaves and the end of summer. Leaves which had just died after fulfilling their life’s mission of providing oxygen.
When I sit in my my grotto and journal, the exercise typically begins as a compilation of what I see around me. An approach that typically makes me be present and opens my mind. This might be the one time in a day that I stop. I look. I listen to the natural world. A world unrelated to a brick attached to my ear.
I can hear birds chirping. Watch the birds and squirrels coexist. See the leaves die their natural death.
This particular day the noise rang out and smacked me. The blasts of the leaf blower entered my consciousness as an image for the noise in my daily existence. Noise which I must continually navigate in and through. Some days worse than others. Leaf blowers appear and disappear outside of my control. Each are obstacles that I need to pierce through to see, hear, and feel what is going on. To be present. Mindful.
The distraction of the noise, of the leaf blower, is just that. Distraction. A distraction to be ignored. Allowed to wash over me and permit a focus on the here and now. The important. As opposed to the trivial.
Transcending the metaphor, the individual making the most noise is to be ignored. We need to ignore the leaf blowers in our lives. In our politics. The leaf blowers spew noise but do not affect the beauty and existence in front of us if we push them to a mere passing sound in our consciousness. Instead, focusing on the quiet beauty around us, enveloping us. The dying leaf falling to the ground. The wind lightly blowing. The distant, soft sound of the chirping cardinal
Focus on the silent. The white space between the noise. The leaf blowers will always be ready to barge in if we let them. If we let them affect us. But why?
A few days ago, I sat in my self-described Grotto of Zen. A small rock garden existing in the corner of my yard where I have hung Tibetan prayer flags and installed a small Buddha. My place for mindful meditation.
It was a brisk morning. I had just finished my 10 minutes of Mindfulness (using Sam Harris’ Waking Up app www.waking up.com). Sitting in my Adirondack chair, perhaps procrastinating until I moved on to the rest of my day, I fixated on several bird feeders about 20 yards away. The interplay of the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks on the ground, in the trees, and through the air entertained me.
They flew or scurried in and out of my consciousness.
After a few minutes, I was struck by their coexistence. They moved in a orderly manner from a feeder, to a tree, to the next feeder, on and then off the ground. Very little conflict occurred between them. On the ground, the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks picked at the remnants of food falling to the ground from the feeders above or another’s leftover seeds.
A break in the action….now the next shift swoops in. Just as orderly as the prior one. This continues for some time.
It struck me that their behavior is instructive for us so-called sentient beings. An allegory perhaps.
These “lesser” species cooperating and co-existing. Without a spoken word.
Enjoying the sweet smell of early fall air, I took in the chirps and squeaks of the birds and their friends.
Most importantly, I took the time to Stop. Listen. Observe. Hear. It was very instructive as I transitioned to my day.
I observed and covered my breath. I absorbed the singing above. It soothed me.
I took a break. I listened and I breathed.
For those few moments, my mind was focused and I was not distracted.
It was a welcome change.
Beginning a few minutes after my last (first) blog post, I have been trying to write my next (second) blog post. Many starts but until now an equal number of stops. I have come up with a bunch of topics and ideas I want to share but I have made perfect the enemy of the good. That has effectively paralyzed me. I have forgotten most of these ideas.
No more. I am going to make this blog more of an experiment. I will bring it in line with how I typically conduct my life. I am usually willing to try things. Experiment. Be an early adopter. Along the lines of something I wrote in my first entry, I am open for growth. Rarely, if ever, do I consider something a failure. If I am dissatisfied with a result, I try to dissect the process to see why the result differed from expectation. This usually involves a fair amount of honesty with myself. It also might require a few iterations of introspection. I need to better apply that ideal to the writing process and this blog.
Move on quickly. Learn but don’t dwell.
I will try to put things out there more often. That was my whole intent in doing this exercise. Future posts may be imperfect or not fully evolved. So what. They will be out there for feedback and reactions. I will learn and move on. The blog will continue to evolve hopefully.
I think one of the biggest issues with people playing “in the second half” is that individuals become increasingly less willing to take chances. To put themselves out there. They stop experimenting. This sclerosis may occur gradually over time but eventually they get to a point where the inertia to stay on the same glide path becomes too much to overcome. It is almost paralyzing. They didn’t realize it while it was happening.
What’s the point? Are you just trying to run out the clock? Why? Makes no sense. To me this is the time to experiment even more than earlier in life.
Write the blog post. Throw it out there. Take the chance. Challenge myself. Revisit what I eat and drink. When I eat and when I chose not to. How I spend my time. Assess my activity level. Try a new movement. Expand my consciousness. Learn.
A word. It all begins with a single word. I have struggled to write this first word for over 18 months now. I have finally broken through. Better this day, than waiting until tomorrow or even later. When I set up this blog site I was 56. Now, I am 58. I guess I didn’t follow Warren Miller’s mantra after setting up this blog. “If you don’t do it this year, you will be one-year older when you do.” Actually, it is even worse than Warren had contemplated. I am two years older.
Preparing for the Second Half. What does that mean? As I said above, I am 58 years old. I am a male. I think I am relatively fit and in excellent health. I frequently wander around podcasts, blogs, Twitter posts, and newspaper and magazine articles dedicated to health, fitness, living your best life, aging, and longevity but these posts and articles are predominantly written by and for people in their 20s, 30s, and maybe, just maybe, someone in their 40s. While I typically find the information useful, it leaves me wanting for more. The discussion or information often lacks, or completely ignores, the perspective of someone in my age bracket. BUT, there are a lot of us and that number is only increasing. Indeed, you will all be here sooner or later. Hopefully.
I believe that I am Preparing for the Second Half. That I have just as much living in front of me as I have in the rear view mirror. Because of this philosophy, I believe that I have to have a different frame of mind than people typically have had at my age. I also feel that I have a perspective to offer to others older and younger than myself. A perspective which will hopefully lead to a dialog with others and further growth for myself and others. Hopefully, it will also lead to an evolution as to how people approach both halves of the game.
The concept of a growth mindset still applies to how I approach life. That is why I am Preparing for the Second Half. The concept of retirement needs to evolve. Better yet, it needs to disappear. I do not look at life as disparate segments. Education. Growth. Accumulation. Run-off. That makes no sense to me. So, I reject it. Education and Growth are ongoing. I want to get rid of Accumulation and Run-off. The only thing I am looking to accumulate is health and fitness, which I want to bank indefinitely. More importantly, I am not looking to put either of those into run-off. Everything else can be looked at from a just-in-time financing approach. It has gotten me this far. If anything, given the power of information technology and social media, it should empower me well into the future.
In the days and weeks ahead, I will look to lay out my philosophy. I will seek to comment on things that I find important to me and others Preparing for the Second Half. I am not sure where this is going, but that is no different than when I entered this game and the first half started. Perhaps, my dialog will be limited to this medium. Or perhaps, it will find fertile ground and expand into other forms of discussion.
At least, the first word has been written. I have overcome my fear of launching this and I can say the Second Half has truly begun. Whether or not it will be longer than the first half, we shall see.
DMC
Preparing for the Second Half 