Does life have to diminish as we grow older? Or can we find new and perhaps surprising ways to keep growing and expanding and giving our gift despite the challenges of aging?

I’ve been thinking of these things since an unusual encounter at my gym the other day.

I’ve been doing resistance training for 10 years. It’s a lifeline for me. The other day I was finishing up my routine on a machine that targets the abdomen when a young fellow came over to me. He had a friendly smile on his face as he looked at me.

“How old are you?” he asked me in a simple, straightforward way. More directly I’m sure than would have happened in the Britain of my youth:-).

I had never met this man but smiled back and told him my age. He positively beamed and said how happy he was to realize we don’t have to go downhill as we age but can stay vigorous and active.

A door to renewal and growth

I’m 80 on Friday, one of many older people who realize they do not have to be subject to stereotypes about aging, and that despite its challenges it can be a time of remarkable promise and opportunity.

I was charmed and delighted last evening when I saw a clip on the evening news of a good-looking 89-year-old man being honored at a graduation ceremony at a US university. How happy and proud he looked, and he deserved to be happy and proud.

Every life is unique. But here are some ways in which I am finding a remarkable potential in aging that I perhaps could not have imagined when I was a young fellow wrapped up in my busy activities and goals.

I am becoming more conscious every day of my true nature. A longing that was in me ever since my youth is being fulfilled and I am so grateful. Simply feeling the presence of my true nature — the timeless wisdom and truth that dwells at the core of each one of us — is a delight that never ends.

My appreciation for the magic of little moments is increasing. It takes a very small thing to make me happy — stopping to watch a bird in flight, or chatting for a moment with the serving lady at my coffee shop is more than enough.

The gift of empathy

My love for people is growing. ”Everyone’s doing their best,” I say to my wife, though it may be time to think of a new line as far as that’s concerned:-). Perhaps it’s because I’m not in such a hurry, perhaps it’s because the years — and my own suffering — have made me more capable of empathy and compassion.

I have always loved Nature, and the lessons of Nature, but honor her more each day for the gifts she gives with such generosity. We have a creek just below our townhome complex that flows all year long and I never tire of listening to the sweet sounds that this creek makes as it hurries past rocks and other obstacles to wherever it is going.

I see past challenges in a new way

I see the various traumas and challenges of my life in a new way. I used to think that some of the events in my past were terrible and unjust, but now I realize they actually opened a door to greater freedom and happiness.

My love for my wife, JoAnn, deepens every day. I see more and more deeply into her strong, enduring, caring spirit and I wonder how I could be so lucky. Except I don’t think it is luck really, I think a hand of grace was with us and brought me to her and me to her.

And last (though I think I could go on for a long time:-) I see my father in a new light. A beautiful light. I could not connect with him when he lived but I connect with him now and I love him as I love my mother and others who have departed this realm. I know they bless me as I continue in my journey of renewal and change.

Truly, our bodies age, but our spirit does not know what age is.

I send greetings and best wishes. I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you have any thoughts or experiences you’d like to share please write.

Picture credit:   ymcapdx

The surprising potential of our senior years is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

This is a guest post from Beth Wilson, a cool friend who writes a cool blog named BHereToday that I’m happy to recommend. Thank you Beth.

I can’t recall a time in my life when I haven’t been in search mode.

As a child, I often stayed up well past my bedtime reading books by Ayn Rand and Thomas Moore. The Prophet and The Tao of Physics were my early companions.

The words, “you think too much” have been spoken to me throughout my life by countless people, from my parents, to friends, co-workers and certainly partners. I admit that sometimes I wear myself out from thinking too much.

In my younger days, I turned over rocks and peeked into nooks and crannies looking for the answers to life’s grandest questions. What is my purpose? What is the truth of life? How can I be of maximum service to God, humans and animals?

Why do people say life is short? Life is literally the longest think you will ever do. ~ Chelselily

Healing from addiction

My obsessive probing ultimately led me down a path to the disease of addiction where I fueled those heady questions with vast amounts of alcohol and marijuana. Thankfully, my years of active addiction were relatively short–I chose sobriety and 12-step programs one month after my 30th birthday.

But the questions continued.

Now, at least, I had a structure to build around my questions. Once sober, sponsors helped me sort through my thoughts and feelings. Personal inventories showed me my character flaws and responsibilities for converting them into assets.

Most of all, my sober mentors and the 12-steps gave me permission to believe in the God of my understanding. Believe me, my personal understanding of a higher power has changed many times during my 21 years of sobriety.

Today my God is total love energy

Today, my God, affectionately known as GUS (God-Universe-Spirit) is total love energy. My belief is that God’s universal love is present everywhere and in every thing, situation, creature and even inanimate objects. Since energy is the denominator of every molecule and sub-particle, so there too is God.

The best part for me is knowing that from GUS’ perspective, the answer to all questions is always a resounding YES!

When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape. ~ Louise Erdrich

As a trained journalist, my ingrained process is to look for the five W’s and the how of situations. Looking for loopholes and weaving stories by plugging those holes comes naturally to me. But the part of me that graduated journalism school (not sober, mind you), is now as ancient as the news gathering business itself.

So much easier to say “yes” to my questions

How much easier it is to throw my training out the window and say YES! to all my questions!

That one word creates a vacuum of opportunity for possibilities to enter. YES becomes not simply an answer but also a platform on which to build a day-to-day existence that doesn’t require details but is content to let the details unfold naturally.

I don’t have to know the plan God has for me; my job is to show up at the start of each morning with a zealous YES! in my heart.

While I am still prone to feeling a now-and-again haunting tug by one of those ponderable matters I spoke of earlier, I can choose to be right where I am, in this precious moment. I can trust that GUS has my back.

My search for life’s big meaning is over

I can choose to believe that the search for life’s big meaning is over.

I say YES! to love and let God set my life’s course.

Editor’s Note: Any thoughts or comments on Beth Wilson’s post most welcome as always and if you enjoyed this post please share it with a friend. Thank you so much for the many terrific comments to my last post and I hope to continue with that theme. Guest post submissions always welcome. Blessings to you and I hope all goes well.

Saying “yes” to life — one woman’s inspiring story is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

There are two ways to think about painful events from our past.

I can think of past traumas in my life — such as the sudden loss of a spouse, the abrupt collapse of the spiritual community that had been my home, two bouts of depression — as afflictions. Which they were, of course, or so I thought at the time. There were times I wouldn’t have minded at all if I didn’t wake up in the morning.

But as I enter my 80th year I’m thrilled out of my gourd to see a potentially rich opportunity in those devastating experiences that I didn’t see before in quite the same way.

The lessons we have learned may assist others

The lessons you and I have learned and the ways in which we navigated our way back from hell may assist others and be of interest to others as they face similar challenges in their own life.

To be very blunt and practical about this, I believe I may be able to create interesting and inspirational “products” based in my own life lessons and experiences that could make a difference in other people’s lives. While at the same time they create a living for me and JoAnn in our latter years.

Perhaps the same opportunity is there for you too if you are interested?

A win-win situation

This is what Martha Beck, the celebrated life coach says in her great new book, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: “A lot of people tell me, ‘I need to find my passion.’ They rarely realize that the word ‘passion’ is from the Latin pati, ‘to suffer”, or that passion originally meant ‘pain’ (as in The Passion of the Christ)…

“Wayfinders of all cultures know that healing the self from any kind of torment is the groundwork for healing others, for creating positive change in the world of Form and thereby establishing your career, your life’s work.” It’s a win-win idea, she affirms.

“Can I really be happy after living through this hell?”

Martha goes on to say: “Without deep suffering, menders can’t possibly help the people who will later look into their eyes and ask, “Can I really be happy after living through this hell?”

Count on it, she says. “Whatever you’re suffering is leading you toward your life’s purpose. It’s giving you depth, resonance, street cred. It’s turning you into a healer – on one condition: you must not stop tracking.”

Please share your thoughts. I send you blessings and hope you’ll enjoy the picture of the large blue spruce tree that grows just outside our front door. It’s May 1 as I write these words. How I love this magnificent tree as it puts out new shoots (buds?) in readiness for the next phase of its life.

Oh, and by the way, a wild bunny lives under this tree. It’s the strangest thing. He (or is it she?)  seems to show up and say hello at just the right time when I’m feeling a bit challenged by something or other.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend. Also, please click here to check out my new Kindle book, The Raven Who Spoke with God.

Are there surprising benefits in challenging times? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

I have loved the notion of the “hero’s journey” – though I didn’t really understand anything about it back then – ever since as a young fellow in postwar Britain I began to feel a strange, painful, but irresistible longing in my heart.

It was a longing I was at a loss to explain. I had a good life in many ways. A good job as a reporter on a London daily newspaper. A nice girlfriend. But the realization kept pounding away in me that there was more to life than the traditional middle-class existence I had been brought up in.

So it was that one day I said goodbye to my parents and my girl-friend and England. In search of a dream for I knew not what I travelled to an unknown land called British Columbia.

A blueprint for a meaningful life

I’ll be 80 in May. I have found what I was seeking – what was calling to me so insistently through the years. It’s not an illusion, but is very real. It’s myself. It’s who I truly am. It’s my own presence, eternal, free and forever undisturbed by the turmoil and traumas of my life.

I’ve found that while life has its challenges, it actually holds a magnificent promise for every one of us.

What has come to be called the “hero’s journey” – referring to both male and female, and brilliantly re-focused in Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces — gives a pretty good blueprint, it seems to me, as to how we may fulfill this rare promise that life holds for us all.

The basis of The Raven Who Spoke with God

I’m hoping it will be of interest at this point to mention a fascinating book entitled The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler. He points out in his book, “I’m retelling the hero myth in my own way, and you should feel free to do the same. Every storyteller bends the mythic pattern to his or her own purpose or the needs of a particular culture.”

I am immensely grateful to Mr. Vogler for his book, which gave me the inspiration and framework for  my own book, The Raven Who Spoke with God, which after being published in 11 foreign language editions since 9/11 is available now as a Kindle edition.

My own version of the hero’s journey

My own version of the “hero’s journey,’ then, is this. We are all born, through no fault of our own, into a world that despite its good intentions, is often not really too interested in our personal journey, or the unique gift we are here to give.

So if we want to find out what our true destiny is, we have to be willing to separate ourselves from “the ordinary world” at first anyway, and face the Unknown – where all true inspiration already exists.

You will meet challenges and dangers, of course. But you will also, I guarantee, find a mentor, perhaps several mentors, to help you on your journey. And as you persist, and persevere, and listen to the wisdom of your own heart you will find the lasting peace and happiness for which we all long. The happiness that is our birthright.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or experiences you may wish to share on this topic.

PS If you’d like to check out my inspirational book PLEASE CLICK HERE. Please note you can read it on your computer or in other ways besides a Kindle.

Picture credit:  Runemaker

Your heart knows where happiness lies is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Brits aren’t supposed to get excited. But I admit I was very excited when “The Raven Who Spoke with God,” my inspirational novel about the unconquerable spirit, got published in a Kindle edition a week or two ago. Heck. There were 1,074 free downloads during the initial promotion I put on.

But life does have a rhythm, doesn’t it. I shouldn’t really have been surprised that once the book was put up for sale at $4.99 things would change and life would do what it always does, ebb and flow.

When I realized the book didn’t seem to be getting any traction at Amazon I felt strong feelings of disappointment and discouragement. It was the most pain I had felt in quite a while, so much so that toward the end of the day I called a good friend named Tess Marshall, author of The Bold Life blog to share my story with her. She wasn’t home so I left a message.

People are kind

There are a lot of very kind people in this world. There really are. And they care. An hour or so after I left my message I had a call back from Tess, and we had a great conversation.

It was helpful from a therapeutic standpoint and it was also helpful in a practical sense. For example, Tess gave me names of some other bloggers who she thought might be very willing to help me get the word out about my Kindle book if I asked them, and this is already beginning to happen.

The rhythms of life

I am in awe of the rhythms of life, how it ebbs and flows. And I am thankful for the buoyant spirit that helps us through the rhythms and challenges of our lives.

I spoke of difficult feelings but the truth is there was beauty in those difficult feelings. They have helped me refocus and strengthen my resolve. And they helped me realize more deeply that though our emotions can be painful at times, they don’t need to take charge.

In the midst of those challenging moments — and I doubt they are finished yet –I realized more deeply that our timeless presence does not change. It is who you are and who I am and anything that brings us closer to this awareness is good.

We give our gift and then we let it go. I send blessings and love and thank you for your interest and support. PLEASE CLICK HERE if you’d like to visit my book page at Amazon. If you read the book and would like to submit a review at Amazon this would be much appreciated.

Picture credit:  photoacumen

Keeping up with life’s ebbs and flows is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age