Oh Monica! Not only do these stories contain great pearls of wisdom, but they are SO VERY entertaining!!! Your style of telling these tales is invigorating!
Yes, indeed we are. I wanted to leave a comment in response to your thoughts about experience can becoming an argument against surprise. However it seems you don’t have comments open…… So Here is what I would have left as a comment:
This really landed for me, particularly the idea that experience can become an argument against surprise.
I work with women in the second half of life, and I see another version of this constantly. By the time we reach our 60s and 70s, we aren’t only carrying knowledge. We’re carrying entire maps of who we were taught to be: good wife, good mother, responsible woman, useful woman, agreeable woman.
And sometimes the great work of this age isn’t drawing a better map.
It’s realizing we no longer have to live by the old one.
There is tremendous freedom in being able to say, “I know what I have believed. I know how I have lived. And I am still willing to be surprised by who I might become.”
That, to me, may be one of the great privileges of getting older.
Oh Monica! Not only do these stories contain great pearls of wisdom, but they are SO VERY entertaining!!! Your style of telling these tales is invigorating!
So often we are thinking in parallel. 😇 Take a look at my article posted today about moving away from old maps.
Yes, indeed we are. I wanted to leave a comment in response to your thoughts about experience can becoming an argument against surprise. However it seems you don’t have comments open…… So Here is what I would have left as a comment:
This really landed for me, particularly the idea that experience can become an argument against surprise.
I work with women in the second half of life, and I see another version of this constantly. By the time we reach our 60s and 70s, we aren’t only carrying knowledge. We’re carrying entire maps of who we were taught to be: good wife, good mother, responsible woman, useful woman, agreeable woman.
And sometimes the great work of this age isn’t drawing a better map.
It’s realizing we no longer have to live by the old one.
There is tremendous freedom in being able to say, “I know what I have believed. I know how I have lived. And I am still willing to be surprised by who I might become.”
That, to me, may be one of the great privileges of getting older.