New Chapters in Life

    All of us go writing the chapters of our lives day after day, month after month, year after year. By the time we reach age fifty, say, many of us have a good idea of what the book may or should be about. Was I successful? Was I content? Was I giving and sharing enough? Was there significant chapters left to be written? We hope and pray that that is so!

    Some do not make it to fifty. I know a few whose chapters ended years and even decades before the half century mark. Is that a morbid view of life and reality? How to assess victory or achievement versus loss and failure? Not entirely fair, that measure and method of comparing and contrasting based on the number of years in and around the realms of mortality. How long did you live? How qualitative was the life while you lived it?

    There are those who only reach 38 years of age, and expire, yet their life was full of vim, vigor, and even extraordinary influence. I think of some martyrs and heroes who may have been cut down in their prime. Others live well into their eighties and nineties, and while their lives have had a great meaning to many surrounding them and even to their periphery, it may be said that their sphere of influence was smaller. So be it. We all have our life impact and trajectories.

    Some are born to be great and better known, as it were, while others are left on the margins. All of us make our marks as we were intended, maybe.

    Each of us with our chapters. What did you accomplish by age 20? 30? 40? And on. Who did you impact? What good (or bad) did you do? At middle age, did you come into your own? Did you struggle? Were there trials that might have been overcome when you were younger, hurdles that might have jumped earlier in life that trip you up still?

    What were you born for? Is there a destiny or path that guides you? Are you still finding it this late in life? Were you meant for something, something bigger and grander that is not yet found? What significance does your life have? What does it all mean? Are there things that still need discovering, uncovering?

    I think so. Some of us are later bloomers, slower "becomers". It may take us longer to affect what or whom we are to affect, or how to accomplish these things. Perhaps some of us will never really get "there". Ouch! How sad, or tragic, or simply disappointing.

    We are given more chances, many of us; we are given opportunities for more growth and success, but at the same time perhaps more failure and chagrin.

    Let us press on, as the verses of the faithful hymn says. Let us not fail to arrive, or fail to continue. We must continue, and find those paths and avenues of success. Failure is an option, but we are promised much more.

    We have newer and perhaps more eloquent chapters to write, to forge forward. We are given more chapters, we pray to our divine source! God, the heavens, fate.

    Perhaps this book will wind up as the masterful tale it was meant to be.

 Inward Observation of the Outward Thing

    This is what we do. It is natural. We make internal assessments of many of the external phenomena and items or people in the world. We look at others and make our inner judgments, all day, all the time.

    We do judge one another. We judge ourselves. We judge God, and we pray that he might be merciful upon us.

    In holy scripture we are commanded not to judge one another, yet this is very hard not to do. Nearly impossible. How can we not look at others and not judge them?

    We can look at each other with more merciful or beneficent eyes. We can be kinder in our evaluations and assessments, but we cannot help but be critical and render judgments.

    We can be too critical of ourselves or others. There are mental illnesses where people are hyper critical, they can spend too much time casting doubts, apprehensions, criticisms against others, including themselves.

    Each of us have our criteria for judging positively and negatively. These can be long standing considerations and concerns. Many of them we built up from small stages of childhood. Some of our leanings or criteria we have built up in more recent years... The old and new, the young and the more mature impressions and assessments of what is what, who is who, and why and how, of all things, big and small.

    As I told my wife this morning, I thought that I had an idea of what to write in this going in, believing perhaps of some grand kernel of wisdom or nugget of intelligence or profound insight, but as I type I see that perhaps I am short of all those things.

    How do we assess our value, our worth, our work, our lives, each other, one another, our efforts, our  outputs, our errors, our shortcomings, our strengths, our weaknesses, our beauties, our uglinesses, and on and on. Yes, how? How much? How often?

    How do we inwardly observe all the outward things? Money made. Jobs accomplished. Babies reared. Tuitions paid. Bills and taxes addressed. Vacations taken, trips made, places visited, memories made. Did we ride a jet ski, a motorcycle, a horse, or a go-cart? Did we London, Greenland, Rome, or Panama?

    Have we done all the things that were on the buck list? The Wall of China, the Old City of Jerusalem, jumping from an airplane, watching a Broadway Show?

    Do we feel content in our own shoes, or the shared footwear of others, the spouses, the children, the family and friends that we connect and bond with? Do we stay clear of those that we do not aspire to hang out with, share the same space with, those that we choose to avoid?

    We are, after all, told to choose wisely how and with whom we spend our time. And of course our habits and hobbies and indulgences and efforts.

    How do we spend our time? Is it quality time, is it good enough for the priorities which we espouse? 

    What do we learn? What do we esteem? What do we hold on to? What do we ignore and evade?

    Inward observations of the external, but also simultaneously the internal.

    The inner becomes the outer and vice versa.

    These are some inner observations, going round my mind.

    And likely has a few others wondering the same.

    What is up with all that?

    Precisely.

    Away we go observing, we will never stop till finished, which for many means death.

    Yet, even death presents some speculations on observations. Save that for another post.

    Did I scratch my initial itch? Have I left things a bit more clear, or more cloudy? I cannot be sure.

    Blogging it... Now into July. 2025, a year of change, I think safe to say for many.

    So we observe.