08/27/2025
My red coffee cone, black fine grind, yellow container with grounds, blue t-shirt, black leggings .... wet shower, cool breeze in the window, sun rising further into the south and setting the same, red kettle boiling the water, blue sky of welcome ..... the morning has arrived.
I am leaning into this stage called 'retirement'. With aging comes change in so many ways. Change that comes in micro moments over years, seeming to take forever, and yet often we wake up one morning and find we have arrived.
I have been measuring the sun out the west window since moving to Elliot Lake. This is the first time I have been so strikingly facing west and needing to deal with loving the sun and yet struggling with the latter part of the day when it is setting. Facing the west into the setting sun is hot, bright and requires curtains that work. As I stand in this third third doorway, with my hands spread laterally holding on to the jam, looking at the western exit doorway for the sun, I am asked, "Can you see how bright this is? May you find the joy in the setting of your next 30 years."
I watch the Young and the Restless and have for years. My mother watched it each day and in her third third and especially after dad died I would call each evening and we would have a chat. I started watching Y&R so we could discuss the storyline. She felt angry when Victor would behave badly. Or when the affair between Jack and Nikki was discovered. She knew whose baby it was and gleefully talked about how Phyllis tried to kill Cricket because she was marrying Danny. We could talk for a long time about the Y&R. Oh, how I wish she was here to talk about the latest antics with Cane Ashby's identity being revealed.
The Y&R moves like our lives, in day to day increments. Slowly revolving around the story of Genoa City's upper crust. As I watch, Eric Braeden now 83 years old, still playing Victor as he has for almost 50 years ... he has aged before my eyes, in micro moments. Life is a series of micro moments and then is nothing but the sun in the western sky. Slowly setting and leaving in its wake the darkness of the night to reveal the light of the stars. The stars are there all the time we just cannot see them until the end of day. Until the darkness is revealed by the setting of the sun. Only then is the beauty of what is behind the micro moments shining for us to see. Stars that have been billions of years getting their light to this planet.
Today I turned on the CBC news for the first time in a couple of weeks and just like Victor is still thinking he is king of the Genoa City council the headlines are the same and the talking head is reading the same script just different words. I turned it off. At least with Y&R I expect the script to stay the same. In real life we should hope it improves. It is sad that I turn it off, but I do. I turn it off because I need to focus on the micro moments of joy and then when I need to look at the bigger picture pick up the news like the star's light. Wait and let the big story reveal itself over time. If I care for those close to me, in here in this time, this day, this space then the bigger picture will be as bright as the sun as it sets in the western sky. The world will rotate again to bring it back tomorrow, at least that is my hope, so as it rotates I choose to make the best of my 24 hours. My micro timing will be spent on joyful things and let go of the light of the news star and give it time to land.
I am moving into the next 30 years of my life here on this planet. The interesting part of this 30 is it is the last leg of the journey, the path to the finish line. The other thirds had more to come at the end of each segment. My more is like the sun setting in the west, it will bring darkness for those left to look at and see what my bigger picture has revealed.
I stand on the threshold of my own joy-filled third third. I will make it count.
