Half life
We made a bucket list of places in the world we want to see, my husband and I, but quickly realized that in the 20-30 years left to us, what is pandemic taking away? How do we plan and do what we desperately want to see with our family before we can’t physically or mentally qualify to remember and enjoy the time together?
Do we plan for outside vacations? There are plenty of those places in the world we want to see that are closer to home. We didn’t want to do the national ones first! Maybe the kids will want to go with us, and maybe that isn’t appealing enough. We are in that no-man’s zone where we wish to take active vacations to the best of our abilities, but we don’t want to party all night with the youngsters. Some days I want to eat dinner at 5pm and have a few drinks before calling it quits and others, I think only my parents could possibly be interested in a 4pm dinner with a 9 or 10pm finish time for the night.
What is it about this middle age thing? This is not what was defined to me as middle aged! I look at all the cool kids’ writings and think I will never measure up! We are past that, missed our prime. I love to try new restaurants, walk in a protest or two each year to support the causes near and dear to my heart, but the younger generation has begun to exhaust me if I am honest. I get teary at the word of the NFL about 9/11, and I don’t quite get the tiktok or snapchat quick snippets of passionate communication.
Have I hit my half-life where we used to have mid-life crises but this is no longer allowed? Am I out of synch with the world? Wanting to relate but a half step behind the active youth and a half step ahead of the seniors? I tear up at the idea of the quiet skies of 9/11 and remember explicitly taking my kids to daycare that morning. Was this some kind of radio show or real? Then, I remember the agony of wondering was my husband at the airport and unable to reach me or on one of the doomed planes?
The skies have only been quiet in two times in my life – 9/11 and pandemic. I look to the skies and am awed by what grinds us to a halt! What does it take to silence the skies? Aging people threatened by terrorism or virus threat – grounded and forced to look within. Look within for what we should be about at this new halfway point. It isn’t really about mid-life crises because that has been redefined. What is midlife – how do we define that point anymore but it is where we pause to review values and focus intentionally on our time left!
What do you value? Do you look to God and how you can contribute to the bigger whole? Do you look for what you can get out of your time left here on earth? Do you want to make a difference beyond your immediate family and friends? I’m too old to start over, but what is the rest of my time all about? Hopefully it is longer than we anticipated in the past!
As we remember 9/11, I think my kids don’t really remember this. As I look at technology, I think I am in that weird generation that can understand and embrace but remembers a world without www. I want the smell, feel and touch of the paper generation, but I am part of the airwaves of the chat, meme and immediacy of social media wave. Maybe I am caught in a gray space, undefined land between ADHD and OCD – acronyms that capture a society scrambling to focus and remember while at the same time furiously collecting memories to recall how that felt or what it all meant!
Do you remember when the skies went quiet because we were afraid of who might be flying over us? Do they want to hurt or send a message in the skies? Do they look like you or me, or have browner or lighter skin? Ae we more afraid of them or of us? Who is them and us anyway? Who can I trust? Where do I turn as my foundations are shaken and my assumptions disrupted?
As we look back, we remember 20 years. Have we grown and expanded on that trust or atrophied and shrunk away from one another? Do we hurl words of distrust and hate? How do we open to on another in a way anything close to what I saw on the sports stations where we joined arms and patriotism was truly about caring for neighbor in spite of our differences? How do we accomplish this at our halfway – can we moved back to that? Can we ever hope to be united and called to care for one another as we were in that great time of sadness and loss? Can we look to the skies and see a reconciliation and unity that endures beyond a half life and soaks deeper into our bones defining us as a people together and open to other in compassion?
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