Hello number 7

I say goodbye this week to my sixth decade. It’s not a sad occasion; I’m pretty lucky to have had a wonderful first sixty years of life. I’m ready for number seven. When the clock strikes midnight on Tuesday, I aim to transition gracefully into my next decade of breathing and being through a regimen of four S’s: sleeping, smiling, and simple striving.

Routines can offer magnificent respite to the vicissitudes of our days. This isn’t the type of insight I might have reached during decades number 3, 4, or even 5. Honestly, it took number 6 for me to understand that pace itself can bring peace. Sleep – on a reasonable schedule – is one of those core biological needs that we resist or ignore at our peril, especially during the middle years. If you are in any way driven to excel like I have been, getting seven or eight hours of sleep per day can seem wasteful. You may, consequently, cut some corners. You may be proud of that pruning, even brag about it to your friends and family. “I don’t need all that time in bed,” you might boast. “I can get by with five or six. That gives me extra time to do more things, to learn more, to enjoy more of life.” Well, decade number six taught me the ego-centric folly of that attitude. Millenia of evolution have programmed us to live longer and healthier if we sleep sufficiently and with regularity. I function better when I give sleep its due.

So please don’t send me any texts of well-wishing at 12:01am on Tuesday; I’ll be snoozing. I will gladly welcome such communications after sunrise.

Smiling is the second ‘S’ of my plan number 7. When I examine the creases of my face each morning, it’s painfully clear that I haven’t exercised my mirth muscles enough during decades one through six to sufficiently counteract the drag of gravity, muscular laxity, and worry. I’ve laughed plenty, sure. But smiling – from the heart – is different than chuckling from the intellect. I like a good joke with the best of us. That’s been good for my heart and my soul. It’s also kept the larger muscles of my face limber. It has not, however, trained the smaller facial muscles and neural patterns that control my ability to broadcast kindness, support, and positive intent with my eyes, with the lines of my cheeks and lips. That type of smiling is proactive. A joke stimulates a response; it is externally-driven. A mindset of kindness lifts my view, helps me see through a different lens. It is, fundamentally, about identity. And that comes from within.

So I aim to smile more from my insides during the next ten years. Success will hopefully smooth some of the features of frown that accompany physical aging. More importantly, it may soften and rejuvenate internal patterns of perspective that may, like my cervical discs, have become somewhat arthritic over time. Radiance emanates.

Which brings me to the last two ‘S’s for my seventh decade of sun cycles: simple striving. Whereas sleep and smiling may be somewhat easier to achieve through a procedure of physical reminders and existential hygiene, this pair of curvy guideposts requires more in the way of moment-oriented awareness, balanced in the broader context of personal purpose and being. I still have goals. I still need goals. I still need to work to achieve those goals. And yet decade number six has a message for number seven about the nature and intensity of those goals: keep them simple.

There are plenty of things that I have yet to accomplish in my life. If I’m being honest, most of what I’ve truly achieved has been fairly limited in both scope and importance. Yes, I’ve been fortunate in career endeavors. I’ve been even more fortunate in health and happiness. But many, if not most, of those so-called successes are more attributed to the people who have taught, guided, loved, and come into my life over the past sixty years than to my own skill, decision-making, or abilities. Great prosperity – in family, friends, and mentors – has shaped and nurtured me more than goal-oriented effort. Genetic luck, in partnership with some personal habits, has sheltered me from an excess of health challenges. Providence, much of it divine, has held me closer.

There is much that I don’t understand about the nature of life, consciousness, and human existence. Book learning, journaling, and deep thinking can only get a person so far. It is increasingly evident to me that there is more to our world that what we sense. There is something else – Spirit. Religions may have imperfectly formulated the framework for approaching and appreciating the nature of spirituality. They have been, nonetheless, expressions of the hope, joy, and possibility that is nestled within the essence of the spiritual. There is grace in our world. There is wonder. I don’t pretend to any special insight or knowledge about the nature of God, Allah, Buddha, or our other limited references to the divine. But I do know that help is often there when I ask for it. And I do feel that I can be part of how that divine – Spirit – helps others, if I only keep myself open and if I maintain a certain simplicity and humility of intention and purpose. Spirit has flowed through others to sustain and nurture me. Perhaps, if I try to keep my strivings to be relatively unadorned and uncomplicated, that same Spirit can flow through me to benefit others in the years ahead.

Thank you, decades one through six! You have been very kind to me. I hope to begin to return that kindness during number seven.