Endings and Beginnings
You know, stuff happens.My mother was seventy-two years old when she died. She had been diagnosed and treated for ovarian cancer, but the diagnosis came too late to prevent the metastasis in her liver. Surgery and two courses of chemotherapy treatment prolonged her life, but in the end, it wasn't enough. Seventy-two years was considered a ripe old age for her mother's generation and my grandmother lived to be eighty-five, which was 'really old'. By the time my mother died, in 2002, seventy-two was 'too young'; that's how much perceptions of what an 'ordinary' lifespan would be had changed.
People still manage, though, to be 'old ahead of their time'. I know a woman, who is going to be seventy-two this year, who is hobbling through what looks very much like a dotage. She uses a cane. She doesn't go out much. She barely eats. She spends her days watching the television, alone and unhappy. She doesn't like her life and she doesn't seem to like her limitations, but she doesn't seem to think that anything can change for the better. She is trapped by her routines and by her expectations. I think that's sad. I think we all begin to die a bit every day following the one where we decide that things can't get better and that there's nothing more to learn or to let into our worlds. I hope that I don't get cancer and I know for certain that this isn't the way I want to be living when I'm seventy-two years old.
"Stasis is a myth. Either we're expanding our lives, or they are contracting down around us, but we can't hold life still."
I'm not seventy-two. I'm fifty-three. On my seventy-second birthday, the year will be 2032 and that really isn't terribly long off in the future. My son will be fifty-three, right where I am now. My daughter will be forty-six. My granddaughter will be half her age at twenty three. My husband will be sixty-nine. (Insert off-colour remark here, if you like. I intend to keep my sense of humour.) I can't predict the future, but I can change the present to affect it. I can decide what I do and do not want for myself in the future and then plan accordingly and, finally, act upon the plan. I know that we can't control much of anything, but we can look after ourselves as best as we can.
I have not been taking the best care of myself. I have not honoured my body, fed my mind, cherished my own heart, or nourished my soul as much as I might and as much as I can. I realize - because I am not an utter idiot - that the trajectory that much of my life is on will head me in the direction of the seventy-two year old woman who is a semi-invalid and who is unable to find joy in her life. This is unacceptable. I'm a relatively happy person and I intend to stay that way.
Because I tend to work holistically, I need to address all four 'cornerstones': physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. This blog will help with the mental portion of the programme; paradoxically, one of the first steps I need to take is to quit living entirely in my head. I have to tend to all of me.
As I fumble around, try to sort through the information overload that is inevitable, try something, fail at it, try something different, realize that it is failing me, and keep on going anyhow, I plan to use this blog as a journal and as a record of my research, efforts and results. I will include book titles, herbal formulation, smoothie recipes and, I am sure, a list of 'beginning' yoga poses that were a bad idea. Some stuff will be 'worth it' immediately. Some stuff will get tried and discarded. The stuff that I am most looking forward to is the stuff that doesn't seem to make a difference at first, but I keep up with it anyhow and then the big change sneaks up on me and surprises me when I least expect it. I will also celebrate, whine, rage and do my best not to give up as I go. I look forward to reading this first entry in a year and taking stock of the changes that I've made and the ways that those changes have improved me and my life.
That's really it, in a nutshell. In my expanding world, I want to make changes in my life *for* my life. And for the rest of my life.
