Perhaps it was going to be inevitable that when I passed the half century birthday mark (and even the 3000 blogs published mark) that I would take a breath and reassess.
I’m not allowed to have a midlife crisis because I’m passed midlife and, in fact, I had one of those when I was 25.
But it’s a well-trodden path and much written about that when people reach my situation in life, they take stock and perhaps wonder what’s next and what’s left?
I think it’s right that we think about these things and I think it’s right that we explore. More and more I seek out the chance to ponder and to think and to make sure that my ladder is ‘still up against the right wall’.
In truth, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been moved by Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks book which he reads himself in the audio version in which I’ve now bought in hardback so that I can annotate because I think it’s one of the cleverest things that I’ve ever read (listened to).
More and more I see evidence of people upset that they’re ‘not making a contribution’ or not creating a legacy or not making a difference.
In the end the difference that any of us make is quite inconsequential depending upon which perspective you look at yet still we run like lab rats on a wheel chasing a finish line which gets ever further away and out of sight.
The only thing we really have is right this minute and to make a difference, a positive difference to the person or the task or the feeling or the thought that’s right in front of us right now.
Adopting that attitude puts a little brick in the ground and then the next and then the next until you’ve built something that’s positive and not negative regardless of what anyone else might think of it.
I want to work for 35 more years but if that is to be the case, it has to be slower and more considered and I have to learn, right now, to take better care of myself for the moments that lie ahead.
Blog Post Number - 3002
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