65 things I’ve learned in 65 years, #s 1-23

I just turned 65 and this is what I’ve learned in all that time. These lessons are peculiar to me, given my DNA and my experiences and my environment. Think about them and see what fits for you.

Parents and siblings

1.      Stay tight with your siblings. Find excuses to get together or make them. My three sibs and I get together for shindigs on birthdays that end in ‘0’ and sometimes ‘5’ (like 65). One of my mom’s dying wishes was that we stay close. (Plus, we do enjoy being together.)

2.      Stay super tight with your mom. Lean into her. Learn from her. Love her like you’ve never loved anyone.

3.      Be there for your pops. Be there when your dad needs you and is ready for your help. It may only come once, and it may come at the end of his life. But when he needs you, drop everything and be there. You won’t regret it. I don’t.

4.      Write a scene from your past. Yes, as a pretend novelist, write a key scene from your life, including dialogue, including setting, including what it meant to you. Write it. Then set it aside for a while. Tweak it some more. Set it aside again. By now you’ll find yourself remembering key details and making notes. This exercise will cement the memory and make it more real to you. You’ll love it. I did.

Health and exercise

5.      Push your body in your teens and twenties. Don’t be a weenie. Push it.

6.      Learn to listen to your body in your 30s to 50s. Your body whispers before it shouts. So, learn to listen and listen well. Adjust accordingly.

7.      Then really listen to your body in your 60s+. You’ve made it this far, so listen, dammit! Your body wants to survive so hear what it has to say.  

8.      When the flesh fails, pay more attention to the soul. It’s humbling to get older, to see cracks in these jars of clay, to lose some abilities. But, oddly and ironically, it’s probably good for the soul to have the flesh begin to fail.

9.      You can’t appreciate it until you lose it. As hard as you may try to appreciate your health—until you hurt a joint or lose an ability—you can’t truly appreciate it.

10.  Eat a balanced diet. Yes, balanced. Nothing more and nothing less. Screw all the diets and fads and secrets and new insights. Olga Kitzworgerer, my mom, taught me balance as a kid and I wished I’d just listened instead of chasing a bunch of rabbits.

11.  Eat your version of balanced. Observe how your body reacts to certain foods and learn to eat your version of balanced.

12.  Lean into your cravings. Not the sugar and salt yearnings—of course. But listen to your craving for things like mustard or cauliflower or fermented foods or vinegar or certain ethnic foods. Your body is telling you what you need.

God and religion

13.  Love God. Love him first and foremost. It is my foundation and my bedrock and will help me weather anything. I am also His because he makes sense to me, he fits into the universe I see before my eyes. The prospect of a creator is more logical than the prospect of chance.  

14.  Read spiritual thinkers. Have CS Lewis and others stretch your soul. CS has changed my life. As has Madeleine L’Engle (of “A Wrinkle in Time” fame) in her book, “Walking on Water.” Also, just lately, George MacDonald.

15.  Connect with God through worship music. It has changed my relationship with God to find certain songs that lift my spirit out of my body and onto a plane that can only be described as holy and godly and not of this world. (There is plenty of bubble-gum worship music out there … fair enough … but there are a few transcendent songs that will take you to another place, lift you into the clouds, move your heart, and seat you next to God.)

16.  Find a dark church. One that uses darkness to help you connect with God. Resist the Hollywoodization of worship and try to find a place that values the solitary and the sacred.

17.  Learn the Bible. It’s actually readable and understandable if you skip liberally and find someone practical to bounce things off of. Yes, skip the indecipherable parts without guilt and spend time on the decipherable parts.

18.  Avoid preachers who use the word ‘exegesis.’ Be leery of those who use the word ‘theology.’ Look for the plain-spoken minister. Look for the pastor who talks like Jesus talked to his people, in plain language, using metaphor and analogy richly, and speaking like a normal person.

19.  Find someone to teach you the Bible. Find them on a podcast, at a church, or it might just be a friend. Learn the Bible and learn how to apply it to your life. It will change you.

20.  Learn why God made the world like he did. Why the evil? Why all the unknowns? Why the silence from heaven? Why God’s restraint? When I got my mind around these questions … ahhh … it was just the greatest. I’ve never felt closer to God.

21.  Accept that time and chance happen to us all. And that is not anti-God. No! This comes from the Bible itself: “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” It’s how God made the universe, leaving room for luck, and it adds mystery and variability and is just overall humbling.

22.  Listen to your spirit and the Spirit. Don’t shut down that quiet voice whispering as you stare at the stars and wonder what’s out there, in the dark, beyond the stars. That may be the closest you get to thinking about God—so don’t shut it down. Fan that flame, listen to that impulse … go there … explore it … find God there … he’s there … he’s there.