“Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving. But how can they know it’s time for them to go? Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming. I have no thought of time. For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes?”
In a couple weeks I turn 65. If you’ve been around me lately, you know I’m a bit obsessed about it. I love birthdays; I think they should be national holidays. I love notes and calls and social media posts. I am not shy about stating when mine is nor how old I’ll be. I’m finally at the point in my life where I think aging is fun, a bit like a race I can still compete in! Sure, it’s a race to death, but it is so interesting! I’m lucky though, I have good health and valuable work, good friends, a comfortable life. So, when I wake up every day and hear “runners to your mark, GO!” I head off along the track curious about what the day will bring. I recognize the privilege.
65 feels like a goal met. I’m not exactly sure when I set that goal, I don’t remember setting it, perhaps it was set for me by Medicare. As woman who has run my own business for most of my life, I’ve been responsible for all aspects of the show, including taxes and paying for my own health insurance. People may not think about a Tai Chi teacher running a business, but for over 30 years that is exactly what I have done, along with the rest of what is needed to provide this specific service. So, starting now paying $250 instead of $1250 a month for my health care most certainly feels like crossing a finish line: hands up waving, sweat pouring down, big smile beaming, “I made it!”
My birth month also marks my annual anniversary of starting the martial arts: 45 years now. What nice hard numbers! 65/45. Unlike feeling that I met some goal however, 45 years in my practices feels nothing like that. It’s weird, it doesn’t really feel like anything. It’s just what I do, like brushing my teeth. It must fit into another category for me, not one of dashing to death or even one with a finish line. I suppose, unlike regular life, I don’t look at these practices as having a beginning or end, just as one big continuum I stepped into 45 years ago, one that will keep going long after I’m gone.
I never really thought about it before, but it is comforting to have such a huge part of my experience in this life be one where there is no race, no goal, no beginning, no end. To be living a life whose practice it is to always be looking up out of the small me slogging through the day in and day out to something vaster and more timeless. For me, these practices have never been about achieving. Sure, I have black belts and awards and certifications I worked hard for, but to be honest - and I think any practitioner will also tell you, once one gets those things, they fade so quickly into the past they become for all intents and purposes, meaningless.
I don’t feel life lived is like that though, realized and then meaningless. I remember at the beginning of the pandemic I very intentionally set a goal, “I want however long this lasts to mean something. I want to know I did not waste my time.” I know for sure I met that goal. And I think perhaps I also set a similar goal for my life when I was young. I doubt I looked at it so cogently, I certainly didn’t realize then that my practices would be that which would give my life so much value, but I must have truly wanted the long stretch ahead of me to mean something. Now at 65/45, I think it has. Or does, or something like that.
This is a hard calculus to make, isn’t it? When our life finish line comes did our time here mean anything? With the end of each day’s race, how’d we fare? More essentially, have we mindfully woven the meaningful and the meaningless, the goals and the no goals, time and timelessness into the fabric of our lives? Are we even supposed to know that answer? Who affirms or denies these questions anyway?
Well, the muse is fun, but thinking I’ll find those answers is probably just a waste of my valuable practice time. After all, as Lao Tzu says, “If you wish to embody the Tao, stop chattering and start practicing!”
Happy Birthday! To me, to you, to us all. Here’s to one more day along the Flow.
“We were just wasting time
Let the hours roll by
Doing nothing for the fun
A little taste of the good life
Whether right or wrong
Makes us want to stay, stay, stay, stay, stay for a while.”