Aging, Resilience and Relevance

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. 

Relevance is how appropriate something is to what's being done or said at a given time.

~Your Dictionary

This whimsical graphic speaks volumes about resilience and relevance, flip sides to the same coin. Rather than lamenting a rainy day, the woman stands beneath a dark cloud catching rainwater to nourish a potted plant. As the saying goes, When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. There's a silver lining in every disappointment, every obstacle, every dis-ease, if viewed through a contemplative lens. Nothing happens to us, everything happens for us and our spiritual growth and development. Aging is no different, and it offers profound opportunities for growth and relevance, or stagnation and irrelevance. As Nikolle Goldman writes in her article, 6 Secrets to Staying Relevant As You Age (see link below), one must seek knowledge, embrace social media, stay fit, go out, dress to impress, and challenge yourself. I am happy to report that my relevancy meter is set to high. 

Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the United States and for the first time since becoming a mother thirty-five years ago, I found myself home alone. Two of my three children and their families were traveling, and the third one lives over 1000 miles away in the midwest. All three made choices that suited their families, and I loved that they did so. I mindfully turned down countless offers of fellowship in exchange for a quiet day at home with my beloved Carla, a good book, jigsaw puzzle, and chicken in the slow-cooker. Doing so gave me time to reflect on past holidays when my relevance depended on providing a family feast. My relevance has morphed and changed over the years, and my resilience to life's changes has kept up. 

Last weekend,  my oldest daughter and her husband closed on a new house. The previous owners had been beset by a string of set-backs and bad luck over the years, and seemed to live under a black cloud. My daughter accepted my offer to smudge the exterior and interior of their new digs to invite positive energy (see link below). So when moving day arrived, I showed up at the prescribed time and fulfilled my promise with bundles of aromatic sage, lavender and rosebuds. Once complete, I offered to stay and help, but my daughter, like me, has her own way of doing things, and I knew the greatest help I could provide was getting out of her way. Later that night, her father and his wife showed up and built a wonderful fire in their fireplace. On Sunday, her in-laws showed up with an offer to take the grandkids off-site for a few hours. Each of us aging parents showed up in ways that suited us, ways that spoke to our unique gifts and talents, in short, our relevance. 

As I prepare to embrace my 69th December birthday, I am able to relinquish the mother I once was in order to embrace the resilience that keeps me relevant. 

https://www.nextavenue.org/getting-older-matter/

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