Musings from a 75 Years Old (soon to be 76)

It is 2:30 in the morning.  I have been awake for 2 hours.  I am still jet lagged after returning a week ago from Indonesia, where the time difference is exactly 12 hours, so day is night and night is day.  My body is still confused. 

I know I still have a brief time of lucid thoughts and energy before my brain and focus start to become numb.  So I am driven to translate things running through my mind onto “paper” while I am afforded the opportunity to display what writing talent that I possess.

Let me start by saying that I am not always sure about the degree of writing talent I possess, but I just received a message from someone that read a post I made to my blog I wrote a few years ago about my life as a paper carrier. 

So I opened my blog, signed in, and maneuvered back to my post and re-read it.  I discovered that I like my story much more now that when I wrote.  I was reliving my 64 year old experiences again through the eyes of a 75 year old, and it seemed both like ancient history and like it happened last week.

And it hit me how extremely important my experiences were then to who I am today.  What is so very profound is that I could not have felt the depth of this insight 5 or 10 years ago.  Surely, I am at a wondrous position to see how everything in the past has melded into the present with a richness of insight not within my grasp before. 

I closed my blog and decided to catch up on some internet news and articles.  This is something a do regularly.  I started to read a review of a play written my Lizzie Simon called “Man and Boy”, a father and son drama and I then I read the following sentence.

“Basil (the son) is addicted to the mere whiff of intimacy with his father, operating without strategy or self-regard in an effort to get what isn’t there to be gotten.”

Dear readers, everyone seeking self-discovery and to those who think they already know themselves can now stop and reflect upon how much searching for self-validation we have made in our lives to fulfill buried needs that yearn for resolution. 

Suddenly all my efforts, to connect to my father became front and center.  They are too numerous to list.  I love it when I have insights that were previously only around in the fog of semi-consciousness waiting for the sun to shine and the fog to dissipate.

In my next stream of consciousness, I am reminded how Master Po taught his young grasshopper in the TV series, “Kung Fu”

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
Caine: No.
Po: Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?
Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

It is after 4 AM now.  I have had an epiphany but sleep is now calling me.