I like to think I’ve had a great life so far. I have done all the things expected of me from a personal life perspective and have had four very interesting career areas over my life from a working perspective. I have travelled for pleasure and work more than most people. All of that has contributed to my meaning of life expectations.
For me the meaning of life is experiences, relationships, doing meaningful things and growth. I would add exploring and learning in my meaning of life as well. I think exploring and learning cuts across the other four areas. I’m sure I’m biased and there probably is some sort of psychological phenomena making me think this, but I think life so far has been pretty darn good to excellent. Everyone has a few challenges in life, but those are the things that fade from memory especially if you have a bit of a growth mindset.
I’m sixty-five and a half now (as Dec 1, 2023) and just as when I turned fifty years old, I’ve started to ask again – What is life all about? What’s next? What should I focus on? How can I be the best person I can be? How long do I have?… I formulated my meaning of life list above when I turned fifty. I like to think that over the last fifteen years I have incorporated that meaning of life into my identity and then acted on it by first learning, then doing (action), and more importantly being. In my humble opinion (IMHO), and again realizing I’m totally biased when I say I’m a much better person now than when I was at fifty.
Over the last fifteen years I have become a much healthier person mentally, socially, physically, spiritually. Probably not so much from a financial perspective. That’s another story. When I say spiritual don’t think religion, I think of spiritual health as serving, contributing, creating value and making a positive impact to a community. The scope of the community can be yourself, family, friends, community, organizations, towns, cities, regions, provinces/states, countries, the world and even the planet. This year I discovered a term that covers that concept – Unity Consciousness. More about unity consciousness in a future post.
As I approach the second half of my sixty-fifth year I have become slightly more focused on mental and physical health. I did that because I wanted to ensure I would have a health-span that would better support my life-span as I age. To live my meaning of life, I have to be mentally, socially and physically healthy. I need health-span to equal life-span. More on that in future subsequent posts.
A person may think they have done a lot and lived a good life, but there is so much more to do. There are an abundance of opportunities and all kinds and sizes of community challenges (think unity consciousness definition of community) to contribute to addressing, adding value and making an impact on.
So at sixty-five years old, I have come to the realization that I’m only half done. I’m really just getting started. As I tell everyone now “I’m just starting the second have of my life!” I know that implies that I’ll live to 130. I realize even with the amazing progress and research on longevity and positive ageing related sciences it won’t happen. However, with my focus on mental, social, physical, and spiritual health I’m hoping my health-span will better aligned wto my life-span giving me much more time and energy to serve, contribute, create value and make an impact that is supportive of all aspects of my meaning of life.
I feel this is important for me, but should be of interest to many others. For that reason, I have also created a couple of other web and social media related initiatives on positive ageing. For now visit https://positiveagers.com . More to come in the near future.
Original post written Dec 1, 2023
Leave a Reply