Monday, February 23, 2009

Second half of life

In the second half of life, we are to begin to prepare for death.  With the possibilities of living longer than we ever have before, I wonder.  As I am now a permanent member of the second half of life, I do not think about death.  However, I do feel a certain peace of mind and heart because I feel held by a hand perhaps.  Like the Rumi poem of how the leaves fall into the hand of god.  I feel now that I have always been led by a force or energy greater than my own.  Even when things were horrifying, I know now that a particular crisis was happening because I needed to change the direction of my life.  That doesn't mean I didn't live in the horror, devastation, disorientation, lost, and all of that.  It means that each experience led me to something I had not known before and could not have chosen it on my own.  As Jung discovered in his "confrontation with the unconscious", psyche has lessons for each of us to learn in our own individual ways.  All of these awarenesses are more conscious now, and that alone gives my life more meaning.  I imagine that this peace I speak of is a preparation for death.  

1 comment:

Sherry said...

It seems like a pretty good place in which to live life now, too!