When I was young, I asked what I should do with my life. Once I found an answer, I spent twenty years wondering if I was doing the best with what I had found, was there more or different I should find and undertake? After that, for another twenty years, I seemed to relax into what I was doing, having changed a lot and changed professional emphasis and area a couple of times. In my sixties, I was reasonably content but began thinking about the next stage—getting old. Now I am an elder and I ask, without the intensity of earlier periods, if I am doing the best I can with my aging life, my life that is surely in its terminal years even if I last another fifteen or so. The question is hard to answer and comes with the added pressure of a dead line. No longer much time to retool, to change course, although I certainly would try if I thought I had seriously erred in a contemporary mutable decision. This is a large part of where I now am: Don’t delay if drawn to do something meaningful for myself or others. Time shrinks and accelerates.
Photo by Jackson Hendry on Unsplash