Aging

I am Right Here

/ James Browning

Taken from “Finding Your Real Self” by Kathleen D. Cone

Hi,
It is me,
I am here,
Right inside of you,
and, although
You don’t know me
Very well,
Quite yet,
Time is on our side
and the days will grow longer,
The times together stronger.

We are friends,
and I’m here
Where I’ve always been.

You are light,
You are joy,
You are kindness beyond measure.

I am the child in you.

The purest part of me is you, the little boy who lives within. You are filled with an innocent joy for being alive and have never lost your sense wonder and adventure. For as long as my memories go back you have been with me and we have witnessed together a broad scope of the experiences of life. I know you have been scared at times and upset at others. We have shared wonderful moments of happiness. We’ve gone through a lot of sadness and heartbreak too. Even though I misplace my spark for life sometimes, you never lose your abundant joy for being alive.

I am deeply grateful for the little boy inside, the child within, who reminds me what true and honest feelings are, how beneficial hope and simple joy can be and how much fun playing is!

You will find more happiness
growing down than up.
Author Unknown

Dreams That Need Completion

/ James Browning

What are three things that burn at you to do before time runs out?

Having had a successful career, raised a son who is making his own way in life well, knowing the love of those close and many other wonderful experiences all combine together into a good life.  There have been many adventures and I’ve been able to indulge keen interests seriously, ranging from photography to piloting airplanes. Far more has come to me that I could have ever dreamed or imagined when I was young. There is humble gratitude for all my benefits and blessings. However, here in my late 50’s I am not done!

What are the three things that come to mind I want yet to experience?

To romantically love and be loved, passionately, gently, tenderly, thoroughly through the ups and downs with my last true love.  To bravely hold hands into old age in spite of fear of demise and death. To share the ultimate adventure of fading into the winter of life.

To write and make a difference; to express my thoughts and feelings and have others find them worthy of their time to read. Ultimately I hope to have what began here as a blog to be the building blocks of a published non-fiction book (self published is fine with me). I also want to finish the great fictional love story I began several years ago titled “A Year From Wednesday”.

To travel; I mean really travel. Go places and stay long enough to fit in and know my way around. A week or two there, a month or two in another place; far away places. The more untarnished the better. There’s a whole world out there that I want to see, smell, taste, feel and hear in its variety.

The beginning of making big dreams come true is to tell others about them… and then tell them again and again. I am grateful for the impetus that sharing my dreams here gives me. 

What three things do you want most to yet accomplish in your life?

When we are motivated by goals
that have deep meaning,
by dreams that need completion,
by pure love that needs expressing,
then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson

Within the Walls of My Being

/ James Browning

I was conceived in a world
beyond my grasp, beyond my
knowledge. A world for me to be
born in…. and to die.
But what about the “in-between” time?
Can I connect birth, live, and death
into a flowing stream of consciousness?
The only decision that is truly mine
is how I choose to spend my days, hours,
and minutes.

Will I develop my “Being” into something
of significance? Will I find contentment
and enjoyment deep within the walls of my
being, or will I wander through life blindly,
unaware of my own purpose? Will I find this
for myself or will I perish? Only I can decide!

Those lines are from a book titled “Visions of You” by George Betts published by Celestial Arts Publishing during the latter part of the “hippie era” in 1972; the year my nineteenth birthday arrived. That time of “freaks” and “straights” is remembered well. The deep south of  Alabama and Mississippi where I grew up was behind me. Now my home was a rented cottage on Ruxton Avenue under the shadow of Pike’s Peak in Manitou Springs, Colorado, which at that time was a past prime tourist town. Rent was cheap and the empty houses and store fronts had been filled by a good-sized hippie colony.

The late 60’s and early 70’s was a special time when I could pick up a hitch-hiking couple and let them sleep the night on my floor with never a worry about anything bad happening. Those were the days we truly thought we were “brothers and sisters”.

Today the real estate in Manitou Springs is high-priced and vestiges of the 60’s and 70’s when I lived there are mostly long gone. But there still are people around the town you can tell by their hair and clothes still hang on to that time gone by.

I’m told the big turquoise ring I wear on my right hand, the bracelet on my wrist and my somewhat longer length of my hair signifies I too am one of those people. I accept the “old hippie” moniker gladly and am proud to be part of a generation that worked to stop a war, moved women’s and civil rights steps forward, were involved politically and brought sex out of the closet. We were naive, but really did believe in something hopeful and beautiful… at least for a little while.

I wonder if the author of “Visions of You” is the same George Betts who today on-line is found to be a professor at the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences in Greeley, Colorado. He’d be about 68 years old or about 10 years older than me. In the press photo for the school Professor Betts looks today mostly like a kindly grandfather. I wonder … is that how I look now? Being not much more than a year from being sixty years old there is awareness within that I became invisible to college girls decades ago and am also entering my “Grandpa phase”. Many might not think of me today as a “hip dude” as we once called guys who were “with it” and “cool”, but once upon a time that was me (or at least in my own mind I was).

I am proud of my life, my accomplishments and the peace that has been made with my mistakes (and I made some doozies!). My days have been colorful, my experiences rich and I’ve lived more fully than most.  There is still more to come; quite possibly the best parts. I am learning, growing, becoming more aware, finding harmony with myself and a spiritual path is unfolding for me. In some ways I’m picking up where I left off back in my early 20’s and that’s a good thing.

Peace, Brothers and Sisters!

He who takes a stand is often wrong,
but he who fails to take a stand is always wrong.
Anonymous

Of Beauty and Youth and Grace

/ James Browning

Yesterday morning brought am early morning appointment at the dentist to check out some minor tooth discomfort I have been having intermittently. Luckily it turned out to be no real concern and the appointment was short and routine. As I was checking out I could see into the lobby as a woman probably somewhere in the 85-90 year old range was signing in. Most of her hair was gone and her skin was blotched and showed marks where things had been removed numerous time. In spite of her appearance, she seemed to have arrived on her own and get around well with the help of a cane.

With my checkout business done, I came around the counter to the exit into the lobby. As I walked through the doorway the aged woman and I made direct eye contact that lasted for a second or two. I said “good morning” to her in a way she knew I meant it. The instant I spoke her eyes sparkled and on her face came a smile that was warm and kind. Driving into work after the appointment I realized how special that little moment she and I shared really was.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to notice old people more and let them know I see them. Sometimes it is just a smile, giving them my place in line, opening a door or a simple verbal greeting, but I go out of my way to do it. Our culture has a bad habit of treating the old as if they didn’t exist. I read once what elders want most from the rest of us is to acknowledge their existence and still see value in them. I have never forgotten that.

If I was 30 years older the woman with the bright smile and sparkling eyes at my dentist’s office might have been my girlfriend, wife, friend or peer. What we shared was ever so brief but in my memory she will be recorded as a temporary friend of the shortest duration so far. I will not forget her and will be grateful always for the moment’s grace we shared.

From “The Old Stage Queen” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Back in the box by the curtains shaded,
She sits alone by the house unseen;
Her eye is dim, her cheek is faded,
She who was once the people’s queen.

The curtain rolls up, and she sees before her
A vision of beauty and youth and grace.
Ah! no wonder all hearts adore her,
Silver-throated and fair of face.

Out of her box she leans and listens;
Oh, is it with pleasure or despair
That her thin cheek pales and her dim eye glistens,
While that fresh young voice sings the grand old air?

She is back again in the Past’s bright splendor–
When life seemed worth living, and love a truth,
Ere Time had told her she must surrender
Her double dower of fame and youth.

It is she herself who stands there singing
To that sea of faces that shines and stirs;
And the cheers on cheers that go up ringing
And rousing the echoes–are hers–all hers.