New life??

This moment is as most of us know is the big one.  The Quantum Leap as we once hoped for, the perfect storm as most of us down deep sense it is upon us. Covid-19, racial inequalities, wage gaps, fear, outrage, and ultimately the existential threat of climate change. 

I’m old enough to realize there are forces out there, beyond our ability to grasp let alone control. We seem to be caught up in a moment of change that most of us hope to simply survive, let alone affect a change. I tell myself that perhaps it might offer a moment for personal transformation, if not societal change.  That is my task, to be open to my personal transformation.  And I ask myself where is the new life that I long for.

Sensing that the possibility of positive profound changes can occur in one's seventy's.  In my own life I have been surprised and delighted by my openness to others, and my capability to go out to strangers, and how warmly people meet me.  Now in my 80s I find myself, loving and compassionate to all that I meet.  An unexpected gift of ageing. Have you experienced anything similar?

Yesterday on the subway, there was this man, with baggy pants and old jacket causing a commotion as he walked down the aisle asking for money.  He stopped in front of a young woman sitting across from me and was bullying her for money. I stood up and told him it wasn't nice to harass a young woman, I' d give me some money, I said.  AS I searched my pockets looking for some change,  I asked him about what was happening to him.  He muttered something about how hungry he was. And I listened, then finding a five dollar bill I handed it to him and wished him well.  He leaned towards me his arms wide and gave me a warm hug.  

Yesterday on the subway, there was this man, with baggy pants and old jacket causing a commotion as he walked down the aisle asking for money.  He stopped in front of a young woman sitting across from me and was bullying her for money. I stood up and told him it wasn't nice to harass a young woman, I' d give me some money, I said.  AS I searched my pockets looking for some change,  I asked him about what was happening to him.  He muttered something about how hungry he was, And I listened, then finding a five dollar bill I handed it to him and wished him well.  He leaned towards me his arms wide and gave me a warm hug. 

Just published a piece about my breakfast club in a national newspaper. Take a look at 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-im-retired-and-miss-my-co-workers-so-how-do-i-replace-that/

The big question: what to I want to do with the time remaining to me in this lifetime?

        

Ulyssess

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone ...

 I am become a name; ...

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

And  something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.