it takes tremendous courage to live well. this is true at any age. that courage is tested in different ways at different stages of life…the courage to ride a bicycle without training wheels,
the courage to receive your first kiss, the courage to be the first in your family to attend university,
the courage to make a commitment, the courage to start a new career, the courage to say ‘yes’ to growing old.
in each stage we have dared. we have dared to break through a real or imagined barrier. as an elder it takes tremendous courage to look back and explore all the guilty feelings, the joys, the defeats, the successes, the boredom and the elation. to courageously go where no one has gone before…for no one else has lived your life.to explore one’s life as a journey, a pathway, a river is to see it as whole and true. this is your creation, complete and magnificent. to create this vision might demand the process of reframing.
to reframe what we might see as defeat, we can ask some questions. “what have i learned? how have i used that learning since the initial lesson? how can i continue to use that learning in the present? how can i pass that wisdom to others?” this reframing allows us to let go of the nagging pain and anxiety around the inevitable errors in judgement or action we have all experienced.
courage is needed in order to reframe. it is so much easier to continue to follow the same brain-grooves that have deepened in our neurology over decades. courage is needed to receive the wisdom of those inevitables. courage is needed to find the way to carve a new brain-goove, a new journey, a new pathway.
and courage is needed to share the wisdom we have gained. we might need to speak up in places and at times where we might have remained silent. courage is needed to respond to our inner wisdom and discern what is beneficial to us and to those around us.to live, fully and authentically, in our emerging wisdom is a courageous act of selfhood, or elderhood.