On Approaching 50

I will celebrate my 50th birthday in less than two weeks. I am happy to say that I can honestly use the word "celebrate" to mark the occasion. I saw a t-shirt in a novelty shop the other day that was black and had the words "Oh crap, I turned 50." I considered buying it, but decided against it as that does not correctly communicate how I am feeling.

My feelings are more properly expressed in a passage from "All the Pretty Horses" a novel by Cormac MacCarthy. The main character, John Grady, is listening to the matron of a wealthy Mexican family tell the story of her youth. It is a story of captivity, rebellion, and hope bounded by the institutional walls of society that kept a young woman from realizing her dreams. The story revolved around one night many years  earlier when a young man had cried for her soul.

She tells Grady, "That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true."

As I crest this hill I find myself facing a new dawn rather than a sunset. I feel invigorated with courage from having turned away fear, embracing opportunity, and taking up the challenge to be a person of value. I am finding the courage to love, to share, and to savor more than ever before. I feel more alive, more aware, and more spiritual than ever before. I no longer need to fear what I do not know because I am in awe of what I have yet to learn. 

I have for a long time resisted the forces of fear and its minions, but the piece that I have been missing or at least have previously failed to fully embrace is courage. Not a macho bravado, which is merely a mask of fear, but courage as a spiritual experience that is greater than faith or belief. It is a constancy independent of fortune that I am consciously allowing to bloom in what has been a void.

As I approach fifty years of age, I consider myself the most fortunate man in the world, richly blessed with family, friends, health, and opportunity. I am humbled, excited, and eager to see what lies around the next bend in the road.

Thanks for reading.

Faith, Knowledge, Doubt, and Depression

Well, November came and went without a blog post, but I am not going to apologize as I was enjoying most of November back in Kansas with my family. I am back in Kent briefly to wrap up the semester and then heading back to the Land of Oz. So this may be the only post for December as well. It has been snowing since about noon and I am getting ready to go out to attend the Kent Festival of Lights, which brings me to the topic of this post. 

One of the things I have really had to monitor during the past several months of living alone is depression. It has been a recurring problem over the years, but this experience has been a strong motivator to deal with it more thoroughly than usual. I know that my nervous system tolerates only a cup of coffee per day. Any more than that I can usually start to feel the anxiety and depression building up. Thank goodness for decaf. Daily exercise is also vital for keeping my depression in check and I am thankful for a daily schedule that makes it easy to fit in 30-40 minutes most every day. I know that this time of year when there is less daylight and the nights are colder gets me down, which brings me back to the Festival of Lights.

I know that this is more of a commercial/festive event than anything spiritual, but it reminds me of the ancient rituals of turning back the night and leads me to the topic I have been pondering for a couple of weeks: where faith begins and knowledge ends. Another value in this equation for me, however, is doubt. 

I grew up believing that faith was more important than knowledge. Knowledge was valuable of course, but it was more important to believe that the end was near, that Jesus was coming back at any time, and only those strong in their faith would be whisked away to heaven, while all those who valued knowledge more than faith would be left behind to suffer. There came a point in my life when I rejected all of that and took up the power of doubt to liberate myself from the fear of unreasonable faith. But for me the price of liberation, the cost of skepticism, is having to accept  uncertainty and the occasional bout with depression. 

I am experiencing a new appreciation for folks who are able to believe, who have faith, but not at the expense of knowledge. I am encountering people who, while seeming not to doubt their faith, are at least being conscientious in their effort and obligation to continually extend their knowledge of the world. This has helped me to realize my error in assuming that people of faith tend to draw a circle within which they stand with their faith and are content to never venture beyond the circle into the unknown. I have also become aware of my lapse in questioning my own lack of faith, my drawing a circle around my doubts and refusing to venture into the world of faith. 

Faith continues to be irrational for me, but not any less so than whatever motivated the many parents I saw this evening bringing their kids out in the cold and the snow so the children could stand in line to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. It was good to see the smiles, to watch snow angels being made, and to just witness and appreciate the innocent belief children that life is good. I was reminded that, as a child, there still was uncertainty, but there was also faith that the adults in my life were in control and that everything was going to be okay. 

Then, of course, there comes a time when we have to be the adults and we come to realize how very scary it is to be the one who is supposed to make sure everything is going to be okay. The inability to make everything okay for everyone in my life is another cause of depression, but is not near as easy to control as limiting coffee intake or taking time to exercise.