At almost 90 my father never stopped bumping into life.
And he never waited to be needed.
I once sat across from my father with a cup of coffee and asked him a question most people avoid.
“What does it feel like to be almost ninety?”
He didn’t give me something poetic. He gave me something honest.
The hardest part wasn’t his body. It was staying relevant. Finding purpose. Figuring out where meaning lives when the world doesn’t come knocking quite as often.
And this was a man with a full life — children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, a house full of history. But life had shifted. The visits weren’t as frequent. The noise had quieted.
There he was. Still here. Still sharp. Still him.
And he refused to wait for the world to remember that.
My father had a little band called The Goldenaires. He played guitar and sang lead. I was his unofficial roadie — loading equipment, helping set up, running behind him trying to keep up.
We’d finish a gig and I’d still be packing up his gear when he’d look back at me, grinning.
“Come on, Monica. We’re going to go play for the old people.”
He was older than most of them.
He did not care. He showed up without fail, every single time.
And every day — rain, cold, or heat — he walked two miles. Through the shopping mall when the weather was bad, through the neighborhood when it wasn’t. Not for fitness. Not for a step count. Because something in him simply refused to go still.
I’d stay home tending to chores. He’d head out.
And when he came back, without fail, his mind was buzzing.
“I think I’ll plant something along the fence.” “I might paint the shed.” “I’ve got an idea…”
It never stopped. Not because he was chasing youth. Because he was still in motion.
We’ve been sold this idea that peace should look like calm water. No ripples. No disturbance. No discomfort.
But my father taught me something different.
Friction is what keeps you alive.
Not chaos. Not conflict. Friction — the daily, ordinary act of bumping up against something. An idea. A project. A problem. A possibility. That’s how you stay in conversation with your own life.
And here’s the thing about friction that nobody tells you:
It doesn’t glow. It doesn’t announce itself as noble.
It shows up as irritation. As that small internal whisper that says I don’t feel like it. It looks like the laundry basket sitting in the hallway for three days — not because you’re lazy, but because somewhere along the way you quietly stopped believing it matters.
That’s friction. Not the basket. The shift.
It looks like walking past your paints for weeks, feeling that quiet pull. Not urgency. Not guilt. Just a nudge. You could ignore it. Or you could pick up the damn brush.
That’s friction.
It looks like the conversation you’ve been avoiding. The boundary you know you need. The moment you realize you don’t agree anymore — and staying silent would just be easier.
Recently, a member of my Monirose Soul Circle felt she was no longer in alignment with my writing. She canceled her subscription. I felt the friction of that — I won’t pretend I didn’t. But I also recognized she was being soul-led. She felt something, she honored it, she moved.
So did I. I used that friction to slow down, to pay closer attention to the turn of a phrase, to the soft thought that could be louder. I let it make me better.
That tightness in your chest when something shifts? That’s not a problem.
That’s friction. That’s life asking if you’re paying attention.
My father didn’t debate the voice that said stay home today.
He walked.
And because he walked, his life kept talking back. Ideas came. Energy came. Desire came. Movement created more life — not metaphorically, but literally, in real time, on a Tuesday morning in a shopping mall in Louisiana.
Most people think friction is something to solve. Something to smooth out, manage away, make comfortable.
But a life with no friction is a life that’s stopped asking anything of you.
And that is not peace.
That’s maintenance.
Maintenance looks responsible. Tidy. Predictable. Nothing breaks. Nothing surprises. Nothing requires anything of you.
But nothing new enters either. Nothing sparks. Nothing stretches.
You’re no longer in dialogue with your own existence — you’re just keeping it running. And that is where the danger lives. Not in aging. Not in the body slowing down. In the quiet, gradual flattening of a life that has stopped meeting you back.
My father felt that pull toward stillness. He named it. And then he walked anyway. He stayed in the friction. He built his own — his band, his walks, his projects, his endless ideas scribbled on whatever was nearby.
He built a life that kept meeting him back.
And because of that, he stayed alive — really alive — until the very end.
Here’s what I’m learning:
Friction doesn’t mean chaos. It means contact.
It lives in the smallest choices, made daily, mostly unwitnessed:
Do I follow that nudge — or ignore it? Do I move — or stay still? Do I say the thing — or swallow it?
Those are the fault lines where life opens.
Or quietly closes.
The danger isn’t aging.
It’s slipping into a version of life where nothing rubs against you anymore. Where nothing surprises you, rearranges you, or wakes you up. Where the days flatten and meaning drifts and you can’t quite remember when that started happening.
My father felt that. He named it. And then he picked up his guitar and went to play for the old people.
So maybe the question isn’t what should I be doing with my life?
Maybe it’s simpler than that:
Where have I stopped bumping into life?
And what would happen if I invited it back?
If something in you stirred while reading this, don’t rush past it.
That’s not discomfort to fix.
That’s your life — tapping you on the shoulder, asking if you’re still in it.
If something in you recognized what my father knew — you’re already in the right place.
This is what we do here, every single week. We talk about what it actually means to stay alive in the fullest sense of that word. Not managing. Not maintaining. Not waiting to be needed.
Moving. Creating friction. Building a life that keeps meeting you back.
When you become a paid subscriber, you get every full piece, every week — plus my guide BREAKTHROUGH, delivered free. And you’ll receive a standing invitation to our weekly BREAKTHROUGH Zoom gathering, every Tuesday at 7PM EST — a small circle of women who have decided, like my father decided, that they are not done yet.
Not by a long shot.
Come join us.
Be sure to send me a message that you’ve become a member - that way I’ll know to email you a copy of BREAKTHROUGH!