The more time I spend in this conversation about ‘the rest of your
life’, the more I begin to question the questions. I find I am torn: my
‘gung ho’ enthusiasm to empower seniors to make a difference and to
help midwife a transformation of the aging paradigm from one of decline
to one of possibility and sufficiency encounters a kind of acceptance
(even resignation) that everything will all work out in the end and
that I should devote the rest of my life to writing, art and the
leisure pursuits that please me.

It
is my inner conflict that interests me almost more than the resolution.
It is blatantly clear to me that the issue is one of choice—my choice
about what I will do with the rest of my life. Who am I? Who am I
committed to Being for the next 30 years or so? My cultural ‘common
sense’ says it’s only my ego that is so hell bent on working for a
better world and that I need to ‘let go and let God’ take care of the
mess. Yet my history and my heart say we only come around once and
whatever we leave is really what our life has been about. My body is
fighting hard to stay present, but I find myself resisting changing my
diet and starting to exercise regularly to support my continued health
and well-being for the long haul.

All of this is to say I am beginning to appreciate that making
choices in midlife are not any more natural or easy or ‘enlightened’
than at any other time in life. We are living each day within whatever
historical/cultural interpretation we have and our actions are all a
correlate of how the world and the future appears to us.

As we age, the future changes from ‘enough time’ to ‘not enough
time’ and that brings a shift in how we relate to the business of
‘choosing’. Suddenly, every choice begins to take on greater
significance. The good news is that when we do choose, it is profoundly
more satisfying. The bad news is that it becomes easy to justify not
choosing and to continue procrastinating for a long time. By doing
this, ‘no change’ becomes our default choice: so we simply end our life
in exactly the same story we have been enrolled in during the first
half of our life.

We need a catalyst to get us to choose one way or the
other…something that will shake us from our fence-sitting. It isn’t
about which choice we make. It’s about actually getting ourselves to
make a choice.

So my choice today: either have the rest of life be an extension of
what I have already created or break from the past and take on entirely
new possibilities and adventures.