There is a description of life on earth, that these three photos communicate- birth, living and end. The continuum is well expressed in the last photo.
The now of life, represents a history and future!
Only as much as living is connected with the history and the journey ahead, the living gets esteemed to a level of consciousness of its preciousness and sacred mission.
The living process witnesses to our history and future !
Each of us is a witness to our ancestry, heritage and parentage. We live reflecting and radiating our formative pathway. The contentment, integrity and altruism that form the inner ambience of our lives currently point to the path we would pursue in our future.
Living our life, remembering from where we have come and where we are going is a virtuous mission!
According to Erick Erickson's theory of psycho-social formation, each person is on a journey towards becoming an elder as he or she crosses the mid sixties. An elder is a giver, provider and pathfinder for others.
We grow up therefore, learning gradually to bequeath what we have been given in life, to others after us.
This is the spring time in one's life when life becomes a formative gift to others!
I feel urged to quote from the book, Falling upward by Richard Rohr frpm page 160:
" No one can keep you from the second half of your own life except yourself. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid. My conviction is that some falling apart of the first journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting, lost job, failed relationship, physical handicap, gender identity, economic poverty, or even tragedy of any kind of abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you do not walk into the second half of your own life, it is you, who do not want it. God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. So make sure you desire, desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God and desire everything good, true, and beautiful.
All emptying out is only for the sake of a great outpouring. God, like nature, abhors all vacuums and rushes to fill them".
Richard writes further:
" Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly opposite. What looks like falling can largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole and lives inside the Big Picture. It is not a loss but somehow a gain, not losing but actually winning. You probably have to have met at least one true elder to imagine that this could be true" (p153).
What a profound and realistic view of making our journey to become an elder in the second half of our ;life!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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