Mid Life, Rejoice

Rejoice at mid life? In the middle of a mid-life crisis? Are you kidding me? Nope. But it ain’t easy. We have to train ourselves to rejoice.

How do you train yourself to rejoice during a mid-life crisis? Couple ways.

One of my favorites is to read good thoughts, daily, like this one:

“Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner in his joy. He who shares tears with us wipes them away. He divides them in two, and he who laughs with us makes the joy double”. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Simple. Have someone be part of your life, and be part of someone else’s life.

This also isn’t easy, especially as we age, and even more so as we pass mid-life into late-life.

Recently, an extraordinarily insightful woman I get to work with occasionally, commented, “I’m no longer the most important person in any body’s life”.

Not in any one’s life? How can that be?

It will probably happen to all of us, if we get the privilege to live long enough.

I like to look ahead and start planning for things I haven’t yet seen, nor can yet comprehend.

Mid-Life is part of our journey, if we are lucky to make it that far. It seemed to me that I shouldn’t waste the gift of middle age.

While it’s impossible to predict the future. There is one thing I do predict, that mid-life rejoicing will help me more than mid-life complaining.

You buy that? I do. In fact, I’ll take two, please.

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What Mid-Life Gift Has Providence?

“What gift has providence on man that is so dear to him as his children”.Cicero

Mid-life Wow!  Providence.  Had to look it up.  It means –a manifestation of God’s foresightful care for his creatures.

God’s foresightful care.

At Mid-Life, we should be starting to harvest some of the mid-life fruit that was planted for us, before we were even born.

Whether you believe in this sort of thing or not, I hope you have a GREAT Monday.

It’s a funny coincidence, I always wanted to be a farmer.  Carpe diem!

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How Could He?

Our almost nine-year old son says he understands. But I wonder, “How could he”? He’s eight!

Seriously, I’ve been working so intensely on a few things this year, that I believe my quality time with him has suffered.

We spoke about this yesterday. I told him I believe after the Finland trip, things will get better.

I also reminded him of how sometimes in life, there are seasons where you really have to work hard – 2009 has been one of those seasons.

Tough economy. Increased travel at work. Big yard. Overcoming injuries for Finland. Cub Scouts. Catechism. First Holy Communion. Etc, etc.

Mid-Life is like this too. It’s a season of questioning everything that has gotten us to Mid-Life.

We take an inventory of our Mind, Body, Spirit and Money.

We realize, “We ain’t gonna live forever”.

We have the opportunity to adjust the sails, as they say, for the second half, which most likely, will not be as long as the first half.

The bonus though, is that we are so much wiser about what should and could be done.

We just have to decide if we’re going to.

Hope I decide wisely.  Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂

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Mind, Body, Spirit, Money

Mind, Body, Spirit, Money.

The big four.

I’m committed to figuring out these four simple concepts, now that I’m into mid-life.

There came a certain mid-life crisis moment, not sure when, that I realized I better start living and quit waiting.

Didn’t want to be guilty of going through the motions, and then finding myself on my deathbed, saying, “I should have”.  Or, “I would have”.  Or even, “I could have”.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Dangerous words. Poisonous words. Deadly words.

You know the antidote, right?

It’s two simple words.  You know this already, right?

I’ll tell you later…….carpe diem, jeff noel  🙂

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Outward Bound 1980

Spring break, 1980.  Road trip.

My University offered The Outward Bound School as an alternative to the beach, or home, during spring break.

Here is a profound quote that has stayed with me since.  It was in the Outward Bound handbook each participant received.  Here it is:

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“You cannot stay on the summit forever.  You have to come down again.  So why bother in the first place?

Just this: 

What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.

One climbs, one sees.  One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.

There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.

What one can no longer see, one can still know”.

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What does this mean at mid-life?

What we have seen in ours lives can help us move forward with the next part of our lives – the part that descends from mid-life.

What we no longer see, we can at least still know.  What we do with this experience makes all the difference, in my humble opinion.

Carpe diem, jeff noel  🙂