A good friend told me the other day that I looked calm and peaceful. I was happy to hear that because I haven’t always felt that way. But I realize at 94 my time for leaving this present life is imminent. And how I live these days is entirely up to me. There comes a time for all of us when we have to decide how the rest of our life is going to be, whether we are 24 , 54 or 94. Are we going to become part of the restlessness, anger, greed and discontent we currently see in our society, or are we going to look to what lies beneath uncertainty, fear, confusion, and reflect on our own condition?
A wise person once reminded me we know our lives backward but we have to live it forward.
Certainly life has challenges and how we accept those challenges and how we resolve them determines who we are. This is a world today replete with choices like none other we’ve had before. We have the choice to be whatever and whoever we want to be. And we have choices that have been with us since time immemorial.
We’ve always had the choice to be grateful or to wish for something else, the choice to be arrogant or humble, the choice to be critical or accepting. We have the choice to be kind and understanding, to be altruistic or selfish, and so on.
Being willing to accept responsibility for the choices we make is not always easy. And we see today, when our choices turn out unlike the way we expected, blaming them on someone else seems to be the right thing to do.
I feel sad for today’s society, because I have known a different time. A time when people were kinder, cared about each other, took responsibility for their own missteps, and did what they could to benefit the world they lived in.
It took a world war to change into that kind of society. I hope that’s not what it takes again.
Norma Lindemann
Santa Clarita
