Celebrating Eighty Years

What will you be doing on your eightieth birthday?  Where will you be living?  If you aren't alive, where will you be buried?  Maybe you will be creamated and have your ashes put into an Eco Urn with a tree seedling so you can contribute to reforestation.  Or you might like to donate your body to science.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  I'd just like to take a peek into the future with you to imagine what we will be doing on our eightieth birthdays.

Imagining is harder than you think and every time I try I get stuck.  Actually I don't really get stuck, I just go an entirely different direction.  Imagine that!  When I try to imagine what I will be doing, I end up imagining the community I will be part of.  It will be a community filled with family and friends of all shapes, interests, and ages.  There will be people who bring out both the best and the worst in me and love me anyway.  It will be a community of forgiveness and forbearing, one where people celebrate my growth and encourage me when I regress.  It will be a place where I have value and my contributions are welcome, and a place that challenges me to keep giving and learning.  It will not really be any different than what I aspire to today.

Aspirations aside, I want to arrive at my eightieth birthday under my own steam in a fabulously trendy outfit with my white curls freshly coiffed, ready to dance the night away.  There must be lovely food, gales of laughter, and fine music - the kind that makes ones toes tap on their own.  It will be a thankfulness party just like every birthday before it; a rejoicing of the depth and breadth of life.  

Tonight I am going to a thankfulness party, an eightieth celebration of the depth and breadth of life.  This one is for Bud - happy birthday.




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