In a pair weeks I flip 65. Should you’ve been round me currently, you already know I’m a bit obsessed about it. I really like birthdays; I feel they need to be nationwide holidays. I really like notes and calls and social media posts. I’m not shy about stating when mine is nor how outdated I’ll be. I’m lastly on the level in my life the place I feel getting old is enjoyable, it’s a bit like a race I can nonetheless compete in! Certain, it’s a race to dying, however it’s so attention-grabbing! I’m fortunate although, I’ve good well being and precious work, good mates, a snug life. So, after I get up on daily basis and listen to “runners to your mark, GO!” I head off alongside the observe interested in what the day will carry. I acknowledge the privilege.
65 seems like a objective met. I’m not precisely positive after I set that objective, I don’t bear in mind setting it, maybe it was set for me by Medicare. As girl who has run my very own enterprise for many of my life, I’ve been liable for readability about all facets of the present, together with taxes and paying for my very own medical health insurance. Individuals might not take into consideration a Tai Chi instructor working a enterprise, however for over 30 years that’s precisely what I’ve completed, together with the remainder of what is required to offer this particular service. So, beginning this month paying $250 a month as a substitute of $1250 a month for my well being care most definitely seems like crossing a end line: arms up waving, sweat pouring down, massive smile beaming, “I made it!”
My beginning month additionally marks my annual anniversary of beginning the martial arts: 45 years now. What good onerous numbers! 65/45. In contrast to feeling that I met some objective nonetheless, 45 years in my practices feels nothing like that. It’s bizarre, it doesn’t actually really feel like something. It’s simply what I do, like brushing my tooth. It should match into one other class for me, not considered one of dashing to dying and even one with a end line. I suppose, in contrast to common life, I don’t have a look at these practices as having a starting or finish, simply as one massive continuum I stepped into 45 years in the past, one that can maintain going lengthy after I’m gone.
I by no means actually considered it earlier than, however it’s comforting to have such an enormous a part of my expertise on this life be one the place there isn’t a race, no objective, no starting, no finish. To be residing a life whose apply it’s to all the time be trying up out of the small me slogging via the day in and time out to one thing vaster and extra timeless. For me, these practices have by no means been about reaching. Certain, I’ve black belts and awards and certifications I labored onerous for, however to be trustworthy, I feel any practitioner may even inform you, as soon as one will get these issues, they fade so rapidly into the previous they change into for all intents and functions, meaningless.
I don’t really feel life lived is like that although, realized after which meaningless. I bear in mind initially of the pandemic I very deliberately set a objective, “I need nonetheless lengthy this lasts to imply one thing. I wish to know I didn’t waste my time.” I do know for positive I met that objective. And I feel maybe I additionally set an analogous objective for my life after I was younger. I doubt I checked out it so cogently, however I should have needed the lengthy stretch forward of me to imply one thing. Now at 65/45, I feel it has. Or does, or one thing like that.
It is a onerous calculus to make, isn’t it? When our life end line comes did our time right here imply something? With the top of every day’s race, how’d we fare? Extra basically, have we mindfully woven the significant and the meaningless, the targets and the no targets, time and timelessness into the material of our lives? Are we even speculated to know that reply? Who affirms or denies these questions anyway?
Properly, these questions are past my pay grade in order Lao Tzu says, “Should you want to embody the Tao, cease chattering and begin practising!”
Pleased Birthday! To me, to you, to us all. Right here’s to at least one extra day alongside the Movement.