Going inside

After spending a lifetime in pursuit of the material rewards of American living, perhaps the last years should be about going inside ourselves for something more meaningful and transcendent than what has been sustaining us for so long.

Perhaps the knowledge that we will soon give up our transient connections to physical constructs attracts to exploring the infinacy of some spiritual realm.

It isn't surprising that we find ourselves in our last years become much more focused on how best to invest our last precious bits of time. Acquiring more things, gaining more knowledge, creating more memories loses its importance when the time lest to use them is so short.

And if we find ourselves just sitting and being, is it because we have finally realized that only time we can really count anymore is the present moment...a rather delightful place where advanced age cast aside comparisons, judgments, prejudices, regrets, strivings.

For most of our lives, we were deeply conditioned to accept beliefs, values, customs, and roles defined for us by others ...parents, siblings, teachers, employers, peers,  politicians, and on...rather than ourselves. They so convinced us of the rightness of popular culture's ways that we allowed society and self to become one.

Perhaps we find ourselves spending last days going over all the moments already lived so we can make peace with our essential being as defined by us alone. Perhaps we need to convince ourselves that our lifetime of chosen pursuits were the right ones for us after all.