We could have ten or fifteen more good years. Who knows, maybe even more. Or, it could all change tomorrow.
Those are the words he said at our annual Summit earier this year. On these yearly getaways we take time to look at the bigger picture of our life. Where we’ve been, where we are now, and where life might be calling us in every sense of those words. It is sacred time that we have come to value, and it has paid off in countless ways. We always come away closer, more connected, with more clarity, and with more gratitude for the gift of this life that we share.
However.
For a number of years now, I’ve wanted us to take a long, hard, loving look ahead. To consider what we might need to be doing now in the todays of our life in order to be ready for the tomorrows that are still to come. To take on the hard questions that come with aging. To unburden ourselves of the things we no longer want or need so that our kids don’t have to inherit any unnecessary burdens. To be willing to do now what it will take to end well our lives that have been well-lived thus far.
Those are some scary-ass things to face. Up until now we haven’t been able to face those together, and I couldn’t face them alone.
We could have ten or fifteen more good years. Who knows, maybe even more. Or, it could all change tomorrow.
Well, tomorrow is here. It arrived on the back of an angiogram that was hitched to the wagon of an unexpected open-heart surgery that has landed us on the long, slow road to recovery here in our beautiful, rural, at-least-an-hour-away-from-medical-care neck of the woods.
This isn’t a hypothetical. This is as real as it gets. And what we didn’t look at in the yesterdays that came before must be looked at today. What we didn’t do in the yesterdays that came before must be done today. What we didn’t face in the yesterdays that came before must be faced today.
There is so much we’ve done well and right. There have been so many adventures taken, trails hiked, hard conversations held, issues resolved, and memories created. There has been so much hard work done to create the partnership we have today that will now equip us for all the tomorrows still to come.
Now that tomorrow has become today, while we deeply wish we had done some of it differently, we didn’t. Which means that we get to do it differently now. Together. Today.
Written with gratitude for my geologist who is willing for me to live our life out loud.
Photo: Tom Pierson