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Dear Subscriber First Name, This week has delivered cooler temperatures to New England. After a summer of more 90+ degree days in a row than I can remember, I pulled out a sweater to wear this morning. I know my days of heading out to wander the garden without shoes are now numbered, so even while wearing sweaters, being barefoot as much and long as I can offers me a dose of defiant joy. One day soon, all the local, side-of-the-road farmstands will close up shop so I am rejoicing in the waning days of fresh, local corn on the cob by happily eating it most every day. And as potted mums take center stage as the only plants hardy enough to be outside in the coming weeks, I am communing more committedly with everything currently alive in my garden; noticing it all more gratefully - squirrels madly burying acorns, bees madly rolling in pollen, birds madly being beautiful, and myself madly deadheading plants so as to encourage the possibility of flowering till their last possible day. Living in New England has taught me reverence for the power of seasons, and the fact that every season contains multitudes of sub-seasons. Where I live, blink a long while and you may miss asparagus season, corn season, peach season. Certainly the short-lived strawberry season. Heaven forbid, too long asleep at the wheel of life and you can miss them all. Then, all too suddenly, potted mums proliferate and we shake our heads lamenting, “where did summer go?” Seasons - if we pay attention to them - awaken us to the importance of being fully present for life because they divide time into sections we can grasp. They have a start- and end-date. And in between these dates, seasons allow us the blessing of knowing that our dance with their days is definitively numbered. I do not want to wake up one cool morning without having savored a local peach and wonder where the heck peach season went. I do not want to have missed summer because I was not really present for its wonders. I want to know that I did what I could to take advantage of it - to celebrate it in its predetermined transience, because of its transience. But the thing I really don’t want to miss is life. I do not want to wonder where my life went…to begrudge its end-date as if I did not know it was someday coming.
Holding a committed awareness of impermanence is my most profound quality-of-life enhancer. Life. Seasons. Days. Hours. Moments…all passing. All irretrievable. All precious. Not allowing myself to forget this is the deal I struck with cancer and is the basis for why I live and love so gratefully. I cannot even measure the increased joy and connection I have experienced because I was rather dramatically reminded - and choose to continue to remember - that my life has an expiration date. I am here for a limited season. The great mystery is - I don’t get to know when that season will end. None of us do.
Life can be confusing, because in not having an explicit end-date, we are prone to take it for granted. Children so easily live for the day. Ironically, as we get older, we fill our calendars counting on the future. We simply expect there to be more life…more time rolling out ahead of us so that we can fulfill our intentions to savor it more fully, to treasure the opportunities it offers us. But for most of our lives, we want - and are encouraged - to forget that our days are numbered, and in forgetting that our days are numbered, we simply miss so much of being alive in the precious moments we are here. Whenever I remember to not take the things and people in my life for granted, there is an immediate and often overwhelming surge in the appreciation I experience and feel the need to express. I am passionate about living this way; this awake to the value of what I have. But what could be more valuable than time? Our lives rest in time. And time - that fleeting gift - is the container we are given to hold all the things. How do we not take the passage of time for granted? How can we be more awake to the improbable, miraculous experience of simply getting to be alive? How can we choose to be more fully present for our days as if they are filled with opportunities that may not come again? How might we let ourselves love our world, each other, our moments as if they matter more than anything? These are the kinds of questions that move me every day. These are also the kinds of questions that are guiding me to begin work this fall on a new book focused on how to more fully cherish aging as the miracle, privilege and opportunity that it is. These are also some of the poignant questions we will explore in the Aging Gratefully workshop that I will teach this fall. I am passionately driven to dive into these questions and I hope you will join me, either in person or simply in how you experience the gift of this day and your extraordinary days ahead. The inspiration below and on my website is offered to support you in being more fully and gratefully present for life. Please enjoy, and share with others, the gifts and invitations that are here. Thank you for being part of - and helping to grow - this grateful community. It means a lot to me. From my big, grateful heart to yours, always -
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