While I’m Still Young

Our conversations these days are often about our plans to uproot ourselves and move to Spain for a few years and do some traveling. On another blog I wrote, “We feel that we need to do the traveling while we are still young, and time's a wasting!” If you know me and how I am in the world you will know that I really enjoy that kind of light banter and irony. (My extra sensory perception hears you say, “Smart ass!” Am I wrong?)

I often find myself to be the eldest person in the circles we move in here in Santa Fe and I’ve taken to inserting that statement into the conversation just to see what kind of rise I get out of the younger generations. Sure it is a joke and it gets a laugh, but here is the truth hidden in it—this very instant, while I’m typing this word, (no, this word), in this instant I am the youngest I will ever be in this lifetime. This instant is the youth of my old age. Viewed from this perspective the statement “while I’m still young” makes perfect sense and is the absolute truth. Consider this for yourself—you are in the youth of whatever part of your life you happen to be in. The question I will ask you to consider is the question I ask myself all the time, “So, this is my current youth—what am I doing with it?”

*****

We were at a party this evening and a man who appears to be roughly my age gave me a wonderful compliment. He said, “I look at you and say ‘there is a happy man.’” What a stroke for my ego! The truth is I am a happy man. When I think about why that is, the answer that comes to me is that I’m happy because I feel totally comfortable living in my own skin, perhaps for the first time in my life. Why? Because I have nothing to hide—my life is an open book (which you can buy and read by clicking here [advertisement]). I have spent years working on congruence, letting all my secrets out. It is just now at age 71 that I feel I’m beginning to get a handle on it. This is who I am, no evasions, no half truths. It is a challenge to live each day this way, but it is my task—along with having fun, of course.