A Full and Ripe Flowering

Nearing 60, I'm contemplating the quickness of hours; the way a year becomes 20, and a grandbaby becomes 9.  There is an excitement in my gut as I see the Exit door just beyond the horizon, so much closer than it was even ten years ago.

My years have brought wisdom and also the understanding there is still so much growing up for me to do before I turn 100.

Lately I've been reading books on the second half of life.  Some folks think that's the time to kick back and do nothing anymore, but many more are approaching these later years with an excitement and expectation that they have the best things yet to offer us, and we them.

There are nights I lay awake and watch all my beautiful thoughts float around in my head.  I'm grateful for these thoughts, though they keep me awake.  They are like beautiful white birds soaring high over a mountain rimmed lake, startling white against the expanse of deep blue sky.  The older I get, the more there are, and though I would love to share these thoughts with others, there are very few   I can coax from the beautiful universe of my mind to be put on paper.  Usually, when I rise to try to interpret their flight and movement into words that can be seen by other humans, they fall, sudden, stony, hitting the lake hard and nothing is left for me to pen.

Sometimes, sometimes, a few come with me and  poem struggles down a page, or some prose or a song.  I am grateful for the generosity of my thoughts as I age.  I am grateful for their gorgeousness.  I am grateful for the years I have left to create beauty.  What about you?  Do you think it's time for you to bow out, disappear off the scenes, shut your mouth and become unnecessary?  I suppose that's not a terrible option, to be honest.  But if we are itching to dance, create, blow our whistle, sing or write, throw fabulous dinner parties or launch hiking groups, well...now's the time.

I leave you with a quote by Sharon Blackie, PhD, from her book Hagitude;  "There can be a certain perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish."