It’s October with only ¼ of the year left in 2019. I’m in the habit of saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun. . .or even if you’re not having fun.” But this month is my birth month, and I’m going to be 70. It seems like a long time ago that I came into this world. So much has happened in my lifetime: computers, cell phones, digital everything, climate change, electric cars and all sorts of gadgets for the home that make life so much easier. How about that robot vacuum cleaner that does all the work for you? Or food processors and microwave popcorn poppers, not to mention microwaves themselves? So, in the whole scope of things, time stretches back a long way, and I marvel that here is where I ended up.
And I can’t complain. Other than a few physical annoyances, I am healthy and happy. I do what I want with my time. I make the choices for how my life looks. If it starts going downhill, I have only myself to blame. But my uphill belongs to me, too, and I’ve done well, I believe, to make a life I’m comfortable with. To me, this monthly write is a lifeline, a way I can reflect on what’s going on and what I hope to discover that’s left in my life.
Here is a poem by Mary Oliver that I think you will enjoy:
What Can I Say?
What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.
Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.
~ “What Can I Say” from Swan by Mary Oliver; © 2010 Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, Boston, MA ~
What keeps you going. living, being? What matters enough to you that you look forward to your days just for the joy of them?
Write about your last birthday and how you felt about getting a year older.
Make a list of what has emerged into the public domain since you were born. Choose one and write about it.
Make a gratitude list of everything you can think of that matters to you. I hope it will make you smile.
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