Dear December 2011 --
I’m just coming off a week-long staycation and the peace it brought to my life is yet another reminder of the joy found in simple rest. I’m thankful for the opportunity you brought to dawdle a bit with family and friends, to ponder endings and beginnings.
With ThinkMan on staycation too, our little family made art, read books, lounged, watched movies, talked, went out to eat, took a day trip to the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, a wildly beautiful place, and in general did what we wanted when we wanted. Callie and I stayed up late every night and slept late every day and got our days and nights completely turned around. It was heavenly.
Now, it’s back to reality, a reality that after our tranquil pause seems to have fewer edges, a reality that turns my mind to the meaning of work, a reality that finds me thinking on being 55, closing in on 56 and the years to come.
It’s 2012 now; in 2016 I will be 60; in 2018, 62 and eligible for early retirement, unless that too changes in this constantly shifting world. I remember thinking when I was in my 20s how any year after 2000 sounded so far away, so futuristic, so beyond imagining, and here I am, my oh my, living the future, contemplating what retirement might be like.
Post-50 life evolves differently mentally, physically, spiritually, and in our society it is not a particularly easy process. We are forced to compete for a living with energetic, lively, saavy 20- and 30-somethings at the start of their careers. They are beautiful in their enthusiasm and zest, and in some work environments, the integration of generations is smooth and gracious. In others, well, let’s just say the situation is one that does no generation any favors.
If the experience and wisdom that comes with working for 30+ years were indeed valued or honored in our society, the paradigm for the less-than-ideal situations might be different, but increasingly such is not the case. Well-documented deleterious effects of ageism are sadly alive and well in the job marketplace, leaving many in the 50+ crowd scrambling for jobs or out of work, and vast swaths of younger adults reinventing the wheel, sailing into storms without the benefit of sage guidance. Profit, celebrity and image reign as monarchs, experience and wisdom are deemed unfashionable, dowdy, and too expensive – and indeed the overall message is post-50, you best get out of the way.
The question then becomes, get out of the way where? For unless one is a white-middle-aged or older male CEO, in which case your worth is hundreds of times that of the common person – the job prospects and the pay for those post-50 is on the decrease, at times astronomically. I’ve seen it happen over and over with family and friends and I’ve experienced it first-hand. It’s an achingly brutal and cruel process for a so-called civilized society, but then there are dark niches and corners aplenty in these modern times that are not gracious.
All the more reason, December, why I am grateful for you – you bring a flow and pattern to our lives, a language I understand more clearly with each passing year, a ceremonial and metaphorical housecleaning in a world we have not one iota of control over. You break down the reality of things – it’s like seeing the forest bold and tall, tree trunks darkly outlined against the sky, all their leaves gone. You bring serenity and clarity, the wisdom to know what might still be changed, and what must be accepted, and just as the trees let go of their leaves year after year, I’ve come to realize, during your visits, this is part of what I too will do the rest of my life – let go.
Time marches faster and faster, often whizzing by at a dizzying pace. I realize there are some things on my bucket list that I will probably never do. I realize I cannot save the world. I realize I am insignificant, not in a demeaning way, but in a natural way that always has been and always will be.
In making peace with this, and with my aging body and mind, I gasp from time to time. This is not an easy process, and yet I realize it is the same process every animal, human and non-human, faces in one way or another.
Can I do it gracefully, with meaning, with graciousness? I ask myself this often; I am sure I am not always successful at it. I prioritize the things that are most important: Family and friends; laughter and joy; days spent in the garden feeling the essence of life in the dark earth crumbling between my fingers, days in the sun, rain, snow; and days of listening to the world around me. I say goodbye to those things (or try to) that are not important, that are not necessary or that do not fulfill.
Success looks and feels different. It is often tiny, magical, intimate, anonymous. It is doing meaningful things with whatever time I have left -- or doing nothing at all but enjoying a winter’s day -- the thousands of hues of browns, maroons and greys in a landscape, the thin pale blue of sky, the slight yellow of sun filtering through bare trees warming my skin.
When someone laughs, I know in the deepest marrow of my bones that these fragments of joy are what life is all about – that the modern world we live in is not black or white or good or bad -- it just is – a distraction -- and it too, with all of its luxuries, amenities, and cruel indignities - shall pass. When it does, whatever humanity lives on may yet learn again what life is all about – may return to that ancient way of knowing -- of just being.
December, you are always welcome at my hearth. I’m looking forward to being with you again in a few months. I know you’ll be here before we know it.
With gratitude --
ThinkLady
