Monday, May 2, 2005On Being 50
I have to pay homage to my son David who is turning 50 today. I find him to have become a thoughtful, caring and creative person. I think about what it was like to become 50 myself. And at that age I had just achieved an incredible milestone. I had gotten my Ph.D. and became a licensed psychologist. I believe that David is having the same kind of experience in his life at this time. So 50 seems to be just a brief stopping point in a surge of a rise in creativity and accomplishments as an outcome of previous intellectual and emotional work.
Happy Birthday David.
On the Water
I am reading a wonderful book entitled On The Water by Nathaniel Stone. It describes the untimate experience of existentialism. Existentialists believe in sheer freedom and accept the consequences and ramifications of their actions wholly. Stone is reporting and reflecting on a trip he made in a rowboat from NYC, around to the Gulf of Mexico and then back up the Atlantic coast to his home in Maine. It took over a year and during that entire time he lived out of his small rowboat. He was living wholly in the here and now and says "I wish to be nowhere else in time and place" as he moves through the journey.
Stone writes about rowing backwards ". . . The backward-facing position of rowing reflects the experience of passing moments, but I know now that it defines the trip by reminding me how much of life I've spent looking ahead. And so I row and watch as my present becomes my past" (p.103).
This book is one to ponder, savor and reflect upon. Can one let go of the attachments and encumberances of the past and future to be fully present in the present?