It always seems that wisdom comes with experience, and experience with time. Time’s passage unfortunately coincides with aging. And since there is no viable remedy for aging, a great deal of our knowledge, study, pursuit, energy, and effort is then given to ‘remaining young’ – or at least diminishing the signs and effects of the aging process, while we grow older anyway!
What if we were born with wisdom, understood the passage of time; the necessity of the cycle of growth and decay, saw beauty in all phases of changes, were able to live ‘hands open,’ permitting receiving as easily as letting go? What if we gloried in our experience of presence, knew about ‘enough,’ and could still smile when our own reflection in the mirror disappears, our footprints wash away, our touch to the skin of a loved one grows cool – knowing it is enough to have been fully there?
Where would all the desperation go; desperate efforts to claim, to keep, to protect, to multiply? And in the refuting of aging as loss, could we live calmly, as if we were timeless? Would we lose our fear? Wouldn’t we live better in this present world?
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