I think once you hit your 50's, birthdays start to be more "reflective" than "celebratory." Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for a good slice of birthday cake and couple of shots of Patron, but I'm spending more time these days thinking about the past year of my life and the one that's coming.
My 57th year on the planet brought the usual "curve ball"of life, you know how it starts out going in one direction and then finishes up in a totally different place. I've learned to adjust to the speed of change in my life but still find it hard to avoid the emotional washing machine that comes with the losses. My classmates, Leonard Batungbacal and Richard Holloway both passed in the last year, both good friends, taken by cancer and heart disease, another in a line of wake up calls that seem to be getting more frequent. But it's more than just the death of people close to me, it's the loss of relationships, the jobs that ended, the home and friends I left behind in Honolulu. The self-improvement gurus say that our happiness is tied to our ability to adapt to change, so I should be getting a big dose of happiness any time now.
It's been a year of discovery and re-discovery for me. Thanks to Facebook, I "re-discovered" friendships that had been dormant for many years, picked up the guitar again after a long absence and finally got myself planted in a place I can call home. I discovered that all those years in I spent complaining about the rain in Portland were really getting me ready to love the cool and wet conditions in Hilo. It's strange how your path always seems to be getting you ready for the "next thing" that's coming. And no matter how much I plan and calculate, I discovered that I have absolutely no control over what actually happens. All I can do is choose to make the adjustment (or not) and move on.
When my sister Lani's boyfriend drowned on July 1st, it was the most devastating loss of her life and a huge shock for our family. But when the Universe started to rearrange the pieces, it gave Lani and I the direction of our life's work and finally teamed me up with a partner that could pursue the same vision I had: to help other's to heal from catastrophic loss. It's an absolute dream for us to work and live together, but we're cognizant of the fact that Michael had to die for all of this to come about.
One of the most impactful things that happened over the last year was getting Netflix online. I thought in my "spare time" I'd watch movies, but at the end of the day, I was so tired that I could barely make it through a two hour movie. So I made the "adjustment" and started watching documentaries, episodes of PBS's Nova and special interest programs that were an hour or less. My niece Pomai got me hooked on programs about food production (she's involved in Agricultural Leadership in Hawai'i). Food, Inc. and Food Matters took meat and anything that was non-organic out of my diet. By the time I got through the third edition of Eating, I was convinced that the future of my health is very much dependent on what I eat. Heart disease, diabetes and cancer took my parents and I'm headed right down that road unless I change something right now. I decided that my birthday present to myself was to switch from an "animal-based" diet to a "plant-based" diet. That's a huge challenge given the way we eat in Hawai'i, but I've already lost part of my body to cancer so the trade off doesn't seem that severe.
I can see people in my age group starting to resist getting older, in just three years I'll be 60 years old. Wow, that sounds old. Sure, I want to be healthy and vibrant as I get older, but I'm not interested in going back to my "younger days." I like the evolution of my mind and my perspective on life even if everyday takes me closer to my end. We are all like fruit trees, we spend our lives growing our gifts so that others can come to "pick" them someday. A tree doesn't try to stop or reverse that process, it just grows everyday. I can see the "fruit of my life" starting to ripen, nature's signal that the most important part of my life is beginning right now.
The part where you give it all away.
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