If I were to ask you, what is your most valuable resource, what would you answer? – health?… financial assets?… special relationships?… time?  I recently heard a perspective that shifted how I am learning to respond to that question.

Each weekday I receive a link to a 3-5 minute morning message presented by Eric Collet. Eric and his team at A Mind For All Seasons conduct research on brain health, memory loss, and dementia. As an elder, the topic holds particular interest for me.  However, Eric and his team apply research to practical, everyday dynamics that can benefit not only professional caregivers but those of us managing our own cognitive health and that of our loved ones and friends. 

A recent morning post is a case in point. Eric’s answer to the question “what is our most valuable resource?” is our attention, what we focus on. Because distractions often divert us from the progress we seek, finding ways to align our attention with our intentions opens the door to opportunity. 

Whether our time frame is today, this week, this year, or this lifetime, many of us find it helpful to set goals, identify action steps, and complete tasks that advance our progress step by step until our goals are fulfilled.  Others of us focus on the outcomes we seek and then cultivate those practices that energetically attract the fulfilment of our goals.

In either case Eric emphasizes the importance of focus.  He references Steve Jobs: “Focus is not saying “Yes” to things and being clear on what you may be saying “Yes” to.  It’s actually being clear on saying “No” to the thousand other things we could be doing.” 

Eric’s posts are free, and you can hear his three minute message on attention at this installment of The Caregiver Minute. 

One day you realize that this is the year you enter your ninth decade. It is a blessing to be so fortunate. It also brings its burdens…if we let it.

Since our 50^th reunion twelve years ago, a group of high school classmates and spouses has been meeting virtually each month and in person annually. It is not surprising that dynamics of aging command our attention, especially since we adopted a theme from Ram Dass – walking each other home.

In addition to companionship, we share books, articles and videos. I just began one of them, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister. The main theme is that whatever our age, life is about becoming more than we are as we enter it and being all that we can be throughout.

In brief but pithy reflections the book focuses on forty themes at the conclusion of which the author offers both the burdens and the blessings of the theme.

Take Regret for example. The twinges of regret are a step-over point in life. They invite us to revisit the ideals, motives and choices we made in the past that have brought us to where we are now.

The burden of regret is that, unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.

The blessing of regret is clear – it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life in an entirely new way.  It urges us on to continue becoming.

Here is a question, reader, whatever your age. What are your current “step-over” points in life, and what are their burdens and blessings?

How often do you ask yourself, “am I enough?” Am I able to meet the moment?  Can I adequately nourish the relationships I value most? Are my resources sufficient?  

When you ask these and related questions, how often do your answers take you down the bunny trail of scarcity?  I’m not enough of: – good / attractive / smart / capable / worthy / wealthy… you name it. 

In her book, The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist challenges our scarcity answers. Drawing on decades of fund raising for the Hunger Project and a variety of global efforts to alleviate poverty, advance the rights of women and indigenous people and mitigate climate change, she makes a compelling case for cultivating sufficiency as an antidote to scarcity.  

By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It…isn’t an amount at all.  It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration…

Sufficiency resides inside of each of us, and we can call it forward. It is a consciousness…an intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances…

Sufficiency is an act of generating, distinguishing, making known to ourselves the power and presence of our existing resources and our inner resources…

When we let go of the chase for more, and consciously examine and experience the resources we already have, we discover our resources are deeper than we knew or imagined.  In the nourishment of our attention, our assets expand and grow. https://soulofmoney.org/ (Pages 74-77)

Rather than blaming ourselves for what we think we lack, paying greater attention to the inner landscape of our soul may lead us to discover our sufficiency that we had not seen or honored. What do you think?

• • 
    I have not posted since May, questioning if any words could hold a truth sufficiently poignant to penetrate our cultural and political battle lines, even for a moment’s insight.  In addition, what words of solace would be sufficient for so much sacrifice and loss attending the arrival of the virus?
     
    Gratefully, with the new year turning, a muse for the morning appeared, pushing my fear aside, at least for the moment.  In a compilation of selections from her many works, [1] Toni Morrison’s reflections on writing itself remind me why I continue to try.
     
    All water has a perfect memory
    and is forever trying to get back
    to where it was.  Writers are like that:
    remembering where we were,
    what valley we ran through,
    what the banks were like,
    the light that was there and the route back
    to our original place. 
    
    And then, she captures the aspiration of those of us intrigued by words and the quest of combining them in ways that reveal new awareness.
     
    There, in the process of writing,
    was the illusion, the deception of control,
    of nestling up ever closer to meaning. 
    
    Perhaps the most moving reminder to each of us during this season of continuing loss is a pro-active response within our power to undertake.
     
    It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody
    long before they leave you. 
    
    Separated by distances, masks and quarantines, whom do we miss?  What gestures of outreach and connection might it take to “miss them” long before we leave each other?
    
    
    [1] The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom (Alfred K. Knopf, 2019), pp. 29, 26 and 28.

Reflections on what lies ahead are natural for any stage of life. What possibilities will the future bring? What will my life be like? Will I be fully engaged or merely a visitor? What decisions can and will I make to affect the outcome?

These musings are especially true for those of us in our senior years. How do we continue to show up? How and where do we offer our gifts, knowing that diminishing capacities may have dulled their shine?

In 1992 Mary Oliver opined on the subject, inspiring us all with the map of her chosen route.  It was a path filled with curiosity, wonder and amazement.

…when death comes/ like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything / as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common / as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth / tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something / precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Over dinner this past week the joyous birthday celebration of a friend turned somber for a few moments to process the pain that a local tragedy recently inflicted on all those involved. Our conversation covered a range of feelings and judgments, as no doubt occurs in many social gatherings these days, whether the conundrums being discussed are local, national or global.

The next day, while reflecting on the previous night’s exchange, I was led to a recent column by David Brooks in which he linked each of us to these larger challenges.

We all create a shared moral ecology through the daily decisions of our lives. When we stereotype, abuse, impugn motives and lie about each other, we’ve ripped the social fabric and encouraged more ugliness. When we love across boundaries, listen patiently, see deeply and make someone feel known, we’ve woven it and reinforced generosity.

In addition to writing, Brooks is working with the Aspen Institute to promote Weave: The Social Fabric Project, an initiative that encourages each of us to do our part locally.

Social fragmentation is the core challenge of our day. We long to be together, but we are apart. We are isolated by distrust, polarization, trauma and incivility. We live in a hyper-individualistic culture that pays lip service to community but which actually values success above relationship, ego above care, the market above society and tribal divisions over common humanity.

The question for each of us is: What can I do today and tomorrow to replace loneliness, division and distrust with relationship, community and purpose?

How do we answer that question? What threads can each of us weave into the moral ecology of our day? “Listen patiently?”  “Make someone feel known?” “Love across boundaries?” What other gifts of presence or purpose come to mind?