About 163 days after our 69th birthdays we all hit 25,000 days of life. On our 69th b-day, the one I had last week, we are living our 24,837th day or so, depending on leap year patterns. For me, March 30th 2018 is my 25,000th day for sucking air on the planet and being John Paul Cunningham Schuster.
So how do I feel about approaching my 25,000th day of life? Not much yet, but if nothing else, It is an interesting marker of life lived. I will check in on this on March 30th 2018 and report out.
25,000 days is so singularly quantitative that it means little, by itself. 70 years is the same. What have we done with our 25,000 days? That is what matters and leads to the qualitative and narrative dimensions of life that carry significance. James Hillman, psychologist, reminds us that “though statistics never lie, they don’t tell the whole truth either… (a long life of 25,000-plus days) says nothing about what is being prolonged.”
But we will still count the years, knowing that it is not the number of days we live, but the amount of life you put into the days we have. Michael Singer, the spiritual teacher, says this about why we fear the end of our days: “You fear death because you think there is some thing to get that you haven’t experienced yet… that death will take something away from you.” And it will—our very breath. But we are the ones throwing our precious days and minutes away. From what I have seen of a lot of our lives, Singer is right—fun matters, but the additional Seinfield rerun, Facebook lurking session, and trip to the casino did not quite satisfy our souls. It does not take much work to let our culture of distraction and entertainment keep us on the surface of our lives. We easily cooperate with stunting our development.
So how do we live without wasting our time? One idea is to slow down, see what we have and pay attention. We can do this at any age. And in later years this means not living today by looking at what we used to be able to do. Longfellow’s famous lines carry this point so simply:
For age is an opportunity no less
than youth itself,
Though in another dress
And as the evening twilight fades away
The Sky is filled with stars, invisible by day
Not wasting our days, adding depth and quality to our lives, not prolonging them, is what paying attention to the twinkling stars that show up later life can deliver, things like being closer to nature, spiritual wisdom, and deep relationships, to name a few.
That’s what this blog is about—appreciating the twinkling parts of growing older. There is tough stuff ahead like losing dear friends, replaced body parts and rehab, and organs that go badly out of tune; but there is a lot of great stuff coming, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. 25,000-plus days here we come.
“Shadows of Reality” by rarye is licensed under CC BY 2.0