Guest Post

It is now early November 2020, and has been a little more than two weeks since the passing of my 88-year-old father Joseph Cardinale. It was both sad to see my father pass away as well as a reminder that each of us will one day shrug off these mortal coils. No matter your religious or spiritual belief, we all viscerally understand that each of us has a start date as well as an end date on this little blue rock.

After my husband died, I spent a year alone on our farm before I sold it and had to leave. Neighbours, friends and family, especially my daughter and stepson were kind, caring and respectful of my solitude. Days alone in my big garden were painfully sad, beautiful and reflective.

Do you ever wistfully reflect on your ability as a teenager to enjoy nine-hour uninterrupted stretches of restorative sleep on a regular basis, without any effort? How easy it was to take that for granted. Unfortunately, as we get older, it becomes hard for us to get that kind of sleep-- in both quantity and quality.

I laid in bed wide awake night after night, feeling anxious and overwhelmed. “Is this all there is to life?” I thought. “With all the success, why do I feel stuck?” On the outside, it looked like I was living the American dream.

Is it the best of times or the worst of times? Charles Dickens wrote that famous opening line of “A Tale of Two Cities” in 1859. He wrote it as a statement, not a question. I suppose it was the best of times for some people and the worst of times for others, just as it is today.

I wrote this poem in Aug 2019 a few months after our 31st MEA cohort, nicknamed Hearts of Gold, finished our magical week at Modern Elder Academy. Everything in this poem is true and actually occurred. If you haven't attended MEA, it will seem improbable.

On October 4th, in Covid-19 time, typical showers were falling in London but under atypical conditions, a handful of elite runners set off on the rescheduled 2020 London marathon. Between the constraints of social distancing and the new “rule of six,” the normal hordes of cheering crowds and amateur runners were absent on the cordoned off streets. Regardless, some 45,000 diehards across the UK were running in personal, virtual marathons.

“The unfolding saga of life on all levels is one of constant transformation, constant changing of form,” says author, artist and playwright Julia Cameron. Nature illustrates this principle in countless ways. The chambered Nautilus, for example, is a deep-water mollusk that builds a spiral-shaped shell for a home.

How many actual books do people read these days? My study wall, which is my backdrop for Zoom calls, is lined with them, but lately I read on my laptop and on my phone more often than I pull a hardback or paperback off the shelf.

As we mature, many of us become attracted to the idea of cultivating the wisdom inside of us. This is a wonderful and noble pursuit. And yet there’s an essential part we might miss. Cultivating anything - whether a crop or something else - isn’t enough. We must harvest, too, if anyone is to enjoy the fruits of our labor.