Where did those 45 years go?

In the living of our lives, we’re invariably so busy making ends meet, financially, priorities, friendships, and otherwise, that before we know it, 45 years have travelled by, almost as if it were 45 days.

Think about this if you’re in your 20s, 30s, or 40s.  I’m finding that it’s not until you reach your 50s that you recognise that the best years appear behind you, yet you have the best years of appreciating those years of past in front of you.

This is what I mean.  I look at the two images herein, one of my family of origin, with the only member missing, my sister who was stillborn, and then I look at the family I’ve been blessed to produce.  I look and I see what a wide expanse that 16,425 days is, and it’s as if there’s SO MUCH life that’s lived that it covers about 16,425 mini-series’.

Here’s the thing.  While we’re busy getting on with life, we barely recognise what is day by day wasting away.  The days of our lives that in some ways we decry as being too hard, too hopeless, too hair-raising.  We may focus on how life is getting harder to live, the world less sustainable, a horrible concept to bring new life into.

When we focus on the future to the expense of the present, we worry away our lives, and because 45 years goes just like that, we habitually live outside of the present many of those 16,425 days.

The gorgeous thing about getting older, especially when our hearts have been somewhat softened by the wisdom of understanding the mercies poured out into our lives, is we begin to relive those years in our present.

We reconnect with important figures in our past.  We appreciate the glories of yesteryear almost as if there were something ethereal about them.  But of course there is; what we would give to go back to those days—provided they weren’t traumatic—and just spend 10 minutes as a fly on the wall, just to experience with our senses what it was like—because we’ve forgotten the minute detail.

These 50s years I’m finding are such a gift.  I’m more in touch with what’s really important, even if I cannot yet fully live into it—because of the obvious financial constraints.  I’m more thankful for time with family, including reminiscing over times of past with family, yes even the harder times.

These are just some observations and I’m hoping not too much a waste of time to read.