Bearing Witness
When reaching old age, life tends to slow down as one internalizes through a more heightened sense of awareness for the essential pleasures of just being alive. This revelation clearly takes precedence while continuing to examine the affairs and actions of a day’s priorities.
• Stopping to chat with another senior citizen, and engaging in a genuine conversation that takes you both back to simpler times. A shared laugh and a tear appear as thoughts seemingly lost in the distant fog of clouded memories once again becomes a pleasant snapshot of times past.
• Driving at a high speed with reckless neglect, potentially endangering anything and anybody in one’s direct path becomes a slowed, more controlled action as a leisurely tour down country backroads, and at speeds that enable those old eyes to focus on objects that have apparently not been seen in decades, if at all.
• That feeling of being free and alive while exploring new terrain on foot, unimpeded by the presence of another living soul other than perhaps those creatures one may encounter in residence along the journey.
• Bearing witness to another living creature, unencumbered by any distractions, and simply living their life in the natural environment to which they were born.
• A bicycle ride or hike through the woods, sitting along a languorously flowing stream, alone on a remote desert trail, or circling an old neighborhood in reminiscence of years past.
• Sitting under a tree (at nearly seventy-five, climbing out on a limb seems unreasonable, dumb, and frankly, unattainable), alone, admiring its size, stature, longevity, and imagining all of the years that organic plant has endured the changes in weather and countless other environmental transitions.
• A renewed sense for the smell, touch, sounds, and sights of organic life while hiking in an alpine forest, a bucolic backcountry meadow, or staring out into the infinite expanses of a world ocean.
• Coming to an understanding and acceptance that life will continue on with or without human attendance or input.
• Recognizing that everything on the planet is connected in some way, and that to ignore this axiom will be at the demise of everything that has been created.
• Understand that our existence is finite, and that many species have come and gone over the history of the planet as we too will also become extinct at some point in time.
If one is fortunate enough to have reached their senior years, then the realization of a life well lived should become intensely illuminated while reflecting upon good fortune and an enhanced sensitivity to just being healthy enough to witness the awesome beauty and complex functions of the world. Each day when our eyes fly open, and we take that first conscience breath, it becomes the first day of the rest of our lives; another day to improve our stature, another chance to make a significant contribution to the world, another granted effort to bear witness to strive to get it right in one’s eyes.