Audio version available below.

Some people say they’re turning into their mother. I don’t think that’s true with me, but who am I turning into? I’m not as refined as I thought I’d be at fifty-eight. I’ll still find myself leaving the house with chipped nail polish and messy hair. I forget to wish people happy birthday. My life is filled with good intentions and not enough follow through. And there are worse things too of course; many behaviors and omissions worse than these.

I started taking piano lessons last year and quit after a few months. I want to be better. I do. Sometimes I think it’s fear of success. What if I do well? Then what? Or maybe it’s just a lack of discipline. I’m generally not a flakey person. I seldom let others down, but I let me down – I set goals I don’t work toward faithfully – and sometimes I set the wrong goals and spend effort after foolish effort towards things of limited value.

I read somewhere that as we age, the cells throughout our bodies are completely replaced with new ones about every seven years. So supposedly, I’ve been regenerated into a physically new person eight times already. That information packs a punch. Somehow, even with entirely new brain cells, I manage to relive parts of my past like a movie stuck on replay. One moment, I am in the here and now and in another I return to grieve an unwanted event. One moment I am fine and the next I’m responding to some stimuli with an overdrawn emotional response. My cells may be new – but maybe my spirit was wounded. Maybe the hardware is new, but the software should be upgraded.

The great “they” say it takes about 30 days to make a new habit. How long does it take to create new thought patterns? Do I need to find a “restart button” to clear out my memory cache?  Or am I simply disconnected periodically from my spirit’s source. Sometimes it feels that way - like the essence of what powers me is gone or unavailable. Neither are true, I know. The same Light that that surrounded me as a child, the same energy that flowed in my young adulthood remains with me now. It is me unplugged from the Source. Me with my head and my heart in clouds of doubt. 

Playing with regrets is a futile game – like the finger torture game with no good end. And the word “should” is most profane. The word rings in my ear like some unharmonious gong. It is the sound of useless guilt. It’s the sound of wasted emotion over past decisions or opportunities missed. 

So here I look to still myself and shut down my internal condemning dialogue. Unkempt hair or nails don’t matter to the universe. The angels don’t care if I miss a piano lesson. What does matter? That connection with the Spirit - that full engagement, conduit flowing, life affirming Spirit connecting me to my inner child and the universe around me. 

So who am I turning into? Maybe just a better version of me – clarified, textured and resolved from experience and preparing to use my renewed cells to explore what life offers next. I am accountable for now and only now. I cannot change the past and I hold no grasp on the future. This reality is liberating and really – there is no fifty-eight or any other age – just new moments greeting new days with new perspectives.

Miriam Shanks, 9/7/2021