Traveling Light

"I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."

—Hilaire Belloc

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Dear Kate,

I have never felt more comfortable being me.

It is not a statement anyone wants to lightly make, for who knows what's lurking around the next corner to corner you?  And you don't want to be accused of being triumphalist, insensitive to the brokenness that is the felt reality to most around you.

I gathered my age has to do what I have gathered in my life, particular to being me, but also how I feel about being a humankind, happy and satisfied.

Age, what does it do to you?  What could you possibly let it do to you?  No simple cause-and-effect, I hope we have by far figured out this much, being older and, possibly, wiser.  Aging, being older, isn't a "mover" in any sense, though its occurrence brings out the best and worst of us.  When we were younger we could afford to get by without giving our best, facing our worst.  Now we need to plumb our limit on both ends.

My feeling also has to do with the pandemic, what I saw happening around me, to people, people my age, people growing one day to my age, people beyond my age.  I've traveled in space and time to retrace my steps and see what I could have been, become more aware of my pace ongoing, hopping and hoping forward.  I've done more traveling in 2020 than ever in my life.

It is honest to get emo about our brokenness, also most dishonest to allow ourselves wallowing.  Hope, how do you market it without finally getting cynical?  We might as well stay fashionably "authentic" and admit we are and shall forever be wandering around the Garden, homeless, dis-eased, beyond the reach of grace.

I am easy like Sunday morning, beyond the last, welcoming the next.

Yours, Alex