Not for the Faint of Heart
A friend said to me last year, “Pam, getting older is not for the faint of heart”. I didn’t think much of her comment at the time but over the past year, her words have rung true.
As I close out my 65th year on God’s green earth. BTW, AI states that this saying comes from the biblical concept that God is the creator and owner of the earth, which is a general theme in Genesis. In the Bible, Psalm 24:1 describes the vibrant, fertile, and life-filled planet that God made. It’s a way of emphasizing the world’s creation by a divine power and its abundance. For me God is energy and for this world, it all started with a BIG bang.
I am not a Christian, but I do believe in Christ. I am not a Buddhist, but I do believe in Buddha. I admire their teachings. I don’t know what to think about Mohammed. I’ve never felt close to Islam because of the sometimes-distorted interpretation of Mohammed’s words to mean that women are secondary to man, the requirement to cover women’s bodies and face, that we are here to procreate, not have a career, etc. This kind of Islam to me is more oppressive than Catholicism was when people couldn’t read or write and the concept of hell through sermon and art was certain to keep the masses in check. The God I know does not say there is only one way or the highway.
Having said all of that, I am a spiritual person. It is my beliefs that got me through the dark days of living with the cast of characters that were my immediate family. Once my father died when I was 5, most days in our home offered some version of pain whether it was being bullied by my oldest brother or the emotional abuse that came from the second eldest brother who was a psychopath to my mother’s choice in men. I can’t blame them for who they are. My pain gave me a drive that I am grateful for.
And it is my spirituality that is now helping me weather an onslaught of circumstances surrounding my health and those that I love. In 2025, health issues have sprung up like clover in the grass in Spring.
I am a follower of Vedanta (wisdom of the Upanishads). Vedanta equips you with the knowledge to make the right choice of action. It trains you to think independently and probe the essence of the human personality – why we do what we do. It is based on reason and logic.
According to the Vedanta Treatise by A. Parthasarathy, “You must become conscious of your ignorance concerning the spiritual aspect of life. But people the world over believe they have the knowledge already. Josh Billings drives home this truth: trouble with most folks is not so much either ignorance, as their knowing so many things which ain’t so.
The world’s polarizations of this are exemplified in the recent tugs of war – vaxers vs. anti-vaxers, Israel vs. Hamas, US Republicans vs. Democrats, Russia vs. Ukraine, and drive the point home for me. Being right doesn’t count because you may be right but from a perspective that isn’t shared with anyone else. Everyone’s perspective differs.
As I’m about to embark on my Route 66 (I turn 66 years this November), I’ve just had a knuckle replacement due to osteoarthritis in my hand – it’s my 3rd and I’m on a cocktail of medications for preventative heart health. Not in a morbid way, I think about my eventual demise as health issues pop. We are born and we die. That is the only certainty in life. In between, we are the architects of our life based on our choices. And not making a choice is also a choice.
My choice now is in alignment with my VALUES and that is to live life with a razor focus on joy and to support those who are near and dear to me. No more pussyfooting around.
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