I am turning 47 today. A running joke I used to hear (and say) about people over 40 is that, if you wake up in the morning and feel no pain, that is a sign that you are dead. If this particular morning is any indicator, I can safely say that I am most definitely not dead. This morning, at the end of a very busy week that came on top of other busy weeks and before the ocean of things to do in the upcoming days, I feel tired. Exhausted, really. If I were to look at only today to reflect on how I feel it 47 I would miss out on so much. And get the wrong picture.
Fortunately, in a conversation with my boss this past week, he invited me to reflect on the past months of my new professional experiences. And we got to talking about compound interest. While I’m not good with numbers or at banking, I did understand the concept as another iteration of the idea that the sum is greater than each single part. And I think that applies most definitely to our lives.
A life we lived is nothing but the compound interest of moments well lived. Moments when we were present, when we feel whatever it is meant for us to feel in that moment. A life we lived is not a life of perpetual joy, achievement, and happiness. It is a life of presence, a life in which we are actually able to inhabit our body and move it forward with intention. A life where we choose presence more often than not.
I say this with a fluttering heart: I have never been happier. And yes, I still look around for the other shoe to drop when I say that. Human nature, or my human nature, I guess. But if compounded age is of any help to us, it is the journey it sets us on towards seeing things more clearly, caring less and less about what others think of us, and growing a bit more courageous every day that defines “aging well”. So I’m going to close my eyes and whisper again, just a little louder: I have never been happier. And I have never been more grateful. It is important that we acknowledge moments like these out loud, even if what follows or what came before is/was different.
What the first half of my life (optimistic, I know) has taught me and probably the thing that I’m most grateful for is a different outlook on life. I used to look at life as a one whole project and get overwhelmed and tired at just the prospect of being in it. The more I aged, the better I got at grasping the joy of living in the moment. And little by little, life revealed its biggest secret to me: that life is nothing but the compound interest of each day, hour and minute that I live with presence.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,
how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
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