Dipping Into My Own Well
renewing refreshing recalibrating revising
Maybe I am the only one who has felt humorously confused all my life and has to remind myself of the truth.
I am 75 and it is the last day of that number.
When I say “I am 75” it is with the feeling that I am living inside my 75th year. I don’t think of my birthday as a celebration of having ended that year, more as a beginning.
For example, when I turned 75 (or any age), a person might have said, “I hope your 75th year brings lots of adventures and good health.”
The thing is that I just completed 75 and this whole past year I have been living my 76th year already.
So tomorrow, when the number changes to 76 and someone says, “I hope your 76th year bring lots of adventures and good health,” what is truly meant is that they hope this for my 77th year.
Normally, I pay very little attention to age. Birthdays and the number, by and large, have been simple in celebration and light in recognition and I like it this way.
The number itself has rarely held significant meaning for me, though perhaps, for example, when I turned 16 and could get my driver’s license it felt like a more important year.
This is a long introduction to my deeper thoughts about the marker on the continuum moving from 75 to 76 tomorrow but really the first day of 77.
I want at the end of 77 to be able to honor that I have shown up in ways I have up to now modified. Yes, maybe that is the word. Or filtered. Or diluted. Or maybe even have not wanted to shock or disappoint or risked.
Anything I write is me being me in the moment of pen to paper because I always write from inside out, from something I feel my soul saying to me. It is usually spontaneous and basically unedited, like writing a letter to a good friend. A stream of consciousness.
However, when being put online, it is rarely the full me. Or perhaps I should say that I pick and choose things about whatever the topic that I feel safe writing about, that don’t stir up controversy, that don’t offend, that don’t unfriend, that don’t show what I question and wrestle with because, well, it’s uncomfortable and what if I want to take those words back later?
What if I have not thought something through enough to put what I am thinking on paper and instead, put my thoughts through some kind of brain device that says, “this is safe to write but not that.” Or “If I am subtle and don’t take a stand I know will alienate, maybe it will in some way be edgy or honest enough to get someone to look at something differently.”
How’s that for a milquetoast way of thinking? Or even of being true to myself?
I have been wrestling with this for some time, and I think with this new number of 76, even though it’s beginning 77, that it is time to stop wrestling and, as the saying goes, let the chips fall where they may.
Yes, some people will fall away. And that’s ok. Some new people will come into my life, and that will be glorious. And to any trolls that show up, they just get deleted.
This is not about writing what should not be written, of which there are many things in that category. Lord knows, I have often verbally crossed that line before filtering and paid a high price. Some would make a great novel.
Anything I or we write is only every partial. There is always something left out or more that could be said or a moment later life changes.
All to say, however, that I intend, when I wake up tomorrow morning, to remember what I have written today, to viscerally feel and say a resounding YES.
I choose my birthday song to be “Don’t Fence Me In.”
I will take the upcoming 77th year to practice it.
I choose “practice” as my word for the new year of life on this planet, a little practice each day, and see where it takes me.
If I am faithful to that, perhaps in 2026 I will celebrate more than I have ever celebrated before, and a number will have mattered more than it ever has before.
And, by the way, it reminds me I can light up my own life, as can we all. It can be surprisingly bright and beautiful.
Feel free to leave a comment about what it is you want to practice, much more fun to hear than Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday, Dawn. And go for it! Let those chips fall with a bang.
And I just ushered in my 86th year - feeing more free than ever before in my life. Free to be whomever is residing within this body, free to think and feel whatever it is that comes from the inner and true me, free to express myself as me and not as the someone I had thought I should be.
As we get older we peel away the layers; each of which contain a small bit of our true selves hidden by the unconscious decision of who we felt we should be.
Dawn - happy whatever year you are, whenever you are there. And, please always continue to be your true self with no pretense. For your true self is a human being who I love for all of your abiities and caring and honesty. My wish for you is that with every coming year you continue to become more YOU because there is so much in there still to come out. And it comes to all of us as a shining light.