Mid Life Celebration

Is That A Bicyclist?

Mid Life in 1980?

Hardly.  I was 21. A senior in college, and a dreamer.

There was a movie that shaped the mid life celebration vision.  A mother was videotaping herself while she spoke to her unborn child.

She was dying of cancer and would never meet her child.

She wanted her child to be able to see and hear, directly from the video tapes, what she wished for her child and what she thought her child might want to know about their mother.

It was in the following days, on the lazy, sunny, fall days in West Chester, Pennsylvania that I dreamt of writing a book for my children.

The book would contain all the secrets of life, learned through books, travels and experiences.

While the Mid Life Celebration website is two years old, the name and vision are the same, what’s morphed is Mid Life Celebration’s purpose.

And it’s more exciting than I could have ever imagined 30 years ago. Ever feel like that?

Do you have important dreams from long ago that are more exciting today than when you first dreamt them?

How did you go about keeping them alive all these years?  Or, how did you go about reigniting the flames?

Why?

Simplicity

Happy New Year’s Eve, the biggest drinking day of the year, in the entire world.

What will your New Year’s (or whatever date you use) Resolution be for 2010?

How did you do with the one(s) you made in 2009?

If you are curious enough or smart enough to pay attention, you can learn a lot from what I share. But like anything where excellence is a goal, the focus has to be constant.

Not everyone can keep up. That’s just the law of nature. There’s only a certain type that has that focus and discipline. What type are you?

Looking back to my 2009 resolution to start an Internet-based business, here are some numbers, mostly for posterity (and certainly not to boast):

• 20 – 2008 Mid Life Celebration blog posts
• 312 – 2009 Mid Life Celebration blog posts

Humongous difference, eh?

Why? Because of:

1. Passion
2. Purpose
3. Focus
4. Discipline
5. Resolve

Joyful

Do you look forward to each new day?

I mean, with a joyful anticipation? Not an awful dread.

This can be challenging to say the least. You have to suspect that some readers may not believe I have much experience with Hell, with challenges, problems, obstacles, fear, failure, struggle, grief, agony, hopelessness, strife, worry, doubt.

Do all of you have a ton of experience with these things?  Okay then, I rest my case. We all do. No one is immune.

Then why am I so optimistic and “joyful”?

Great question.  Some people think I’m crazy. A weirdo.  Or, worse, a fake.

It’s taken like 50 years, but, I’m totally cool with it all. Finally.

One of the secrets to being joyful, is so simple, you’re not going to believe it. And it brings great joy to tell you that tomorrow, I’ll reveal January’s “value”.

Mid Life holiday stress can rob us of the joy  we could be experiencing, if only we could focus.

But how are we supposed to focus when this time of year is so hectic?

And it occurred to me that this time of year has always been hectic. Ever see “A Miracle on 34th Street“?

It was inspired on Christmas eve, 1944, when Valentine Davies, a screenwriter, went gift shopping for his wife.  It was hectic, crazy, and lacked the spirit of Christmas we all know in our hearts, but often fail to make time for.

Valentine set out to create a movie that would help remind everyone that the spirit of Christmas and Santa Claus, is real.  Very real.

Considered a “B” movie, it was released during the summer, and never advertised as a Christmas movie.

The American public embraced the movie so much that it ran in theaters straight through the end of the year.

It is one of the all-time great Christmas movies and one that my family and I watch every holiday season, when we can find the time.

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  I say let your affairs be as one, two, or three and not a hundred or a thousand… We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” — Henry David Thoreau

Amen.

Joy is a choice I get to make every moment of every day.  Same with you, even if it doesn’t seem so.

Did I mention that I have a pile of emotional baggage as big as many of you?

Did I mention that my wife and I are disabled?

Did I mention we spent our life savings to become parents?

Did I mention our son has an incurable disease?

Did I mention that I’ve overcome addiction?

The list goes on and on. So please, please don’t say, “But you’ve got it made.  You are living the dream.  You are so fortunate.”

This would generally be considered an insult, and completely disrespectful.  And maybe the beginning of an excuse.

But forgiveness rushes in and all that’s left is joy.  Almost unspeakable joy.

“Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action”. — Goethe

What does this mean exactly?  Perhaps it is as simple as this:

“The unexamined life is not worth living”.   — Socrates

We get one passage here on Earth.  Let’s make it a good one.