What Did You Come Here For?

"Now that it's all over, what did you really do yesterday that was worth mentioning?" Coleman Cox

What did I do yesterday? I can't hardly remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, certainly not the day before. The older I get the more I experience "Mental Pause". I go into a room to get something and by the time I'm there I've forgotten what I came for. What did I come here do in the first place? Why did I occupy this particular body at this particular southern location?

Oh year! I remember now! I came here to learn how to love and be loved, how to forgive and be forgiven, how to be patient and extend patience, to help and be helped, to ask questions and become answers for those few who need me to be even if for just a moment.

Question: What did you come here to do this lifetime?

The Real Work

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.” —Wendell Berry

At mid-life or other watershed periods, many of us feel lost, confused, uncertain of the terrain ahead. Sometimes I turn to look back at the well-worn patterns of the more familiar past, and I know I can’t bring some of the old ways forward into the future. These times seems to call for a kind of rebirth.

I don’t have to totally leave my career or make a major geographical move in order to meet this challenge, but I can take stock of how I work and relate to others. I have to understand myself differently in the world. I can take the pressure off to prove my worth through work, since finally I know now that I'm worthwhile regardless of what work I do.

Becoming a new person inside, getting a clearer understanding of life’s priorities, is the road my changing body and soul must walk. I can no longer coast on the blissful ignorance of youth; now I must roll up my sleeves and use real, permanent,great inner resources —wisdom, faith, love—to live the rest of my life as honorably as I can.

Question: What Life Change brought with it a Rebirth?

Acceptance

“The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the
pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself. . .
the latter I translate into a new tongue.” —Walt Whitman

Some mornings like this one my soul is so quiet, I can hear a leaf drop through the branches of the oak tree. I can sense the cool water in the stream that stretches all the way through the valley. I can listen to the infinite play of wind chimes.

Then there are days when a barking dog makes me want to bark back, louder. When serenity is tenuous, even the sound of a plane passing at thirty-five thousand feet can be enough to ruin the morning. Now after my heart attack planes do not perturb me as often as they used to. Even the sound of the young man's car radio boom, boom, booming doesn't bother me like it would have before.

On both kinds of days, the noisy and the quiet, the same challenge exists: to accept and, yes, even love whatever is taking place inside me. To see myself as many, to practice loving these seemingly opposite parts of myself is to begin to learn real love.

Time

Remember when you had so much time on your hands you could "kill" it and not feel a bit guilty about the crime? Remember when you had "all the time in the world"? Do you recall when "time was on your side?" Time was so much in abundance that you could waste time, spend time, lose time,and even make time, time and time again.

Since my heart attack, when time almost caught up with me and killed me I feel more relaxed about time in some ways than I ever have before. And in other ways (none of them morbid) I feel that time is "running" out.

I told a friend the other day that if the next 10 years go by as fast as the last 20 then they will only feel like 5. Today I feel that I want to make the most of the time I have left no matter how long or short that is and the way to this is by only doing what I really love and being with those I love more of the time than not.

Question: Is time a'wastin'?

Some days the words come easy. Some days they don't come at all. Some days it is so easy to love and some days it is hard. Since my heart attack the words have been coming steadily even if not real creatively. And love and being loved is easier than it has ever been for me.

I wish it didn't take a crisis, an emergency room, a by-pass to make love easier. But that is what it took and I wouldn't take anything for it.

Question: What did it take to get you to take in the love that has been sent your way?

Fear and Love

Fear. I'm afraid I'm going to work too much. I'm afraid of getting too stressed. I'm afraid I'm going to get too tired. I'm afraid I'm going to have another heart attack.

I used not to not be afraid of any of the above and consequently I worked too much, got too stressed and way too tired. Maybe fear is not such a bad thing as long as I don't let it completely rule my life.

I'm not afraid about money, I'm not afraid that I won't write anything of importance and I'm not afraid that I am not loved. One thing this heart attack has done is put many things in perspective and shown me how much I am loved. I am so grateful.

Someone once said, I think it was Jerald Jampolsky, "there are only two emotions--Love and Fear." Well I have experienced and am experiencing both simultaneously. For the record fear is receding and love is becoming the true healer it really can be.

What are you still afraid of and what are you loving more and more the older you get?