Amy Lederman Dec 31, 2020 Columns, Opinion, View from Central Park
If you had told me a year ago that I would change my life by selling my Tucson home to be closer to my mom in New Jersey, or that I would spend the winter bundled up in Boston rather than hiking in the sunshine, I would have responded: “And pigs will fly!” But there it is and here I am.
Change itself is a paradox. Nothing is as consistently permanent as change and yet our relationship to change is fluid and morphs as we encounter different phases of life.
Some changes are pure serendipity; others, intentional. I certainly never expected when I hitchhiked across the country after college that I would end up in Tucson or that a nice Jewish doctor from LA would move across state lines to marry me. Yet in the middle of my law career, I made the conscious choice to follow my heart and “study Jewish,” which changed the trajectory of my life in ways too numerous to count.
When we are young and starting out — acquiring education, careers and family, change is usually positive. It is the currency by which we better our chances and expand our opportunities. A new job, a new relationship, a new home are exciting stepping stones to personal and professional growth.
In our middle years, if we are blessed with good health and sufficient resources, we often see change as a refinement of what we have already created, a way to improve and enhance our families, careers and life experiences.
But in our later years, change begins to take on a new, somewhat challenging meaning, as it is often heralded by diminution of health, loss of capacity and in the end, loss of life itself.
“For everything there is a time and a season,” King Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes as he enumerates various way stations and aspects of life such as birth and death, dancing and mourning, keeping and relinquishing, planting and reaping. Solomon also includes a “time to uproot the planted,” something we tend not to think about as we lay down our roots, build our families and careers and develop community.
Uprooting the planted is a stark image and beckons us to consider that the deeper the roots — the more invested we are in the life we have created — the harder it may be to uproot what we have planted when the time arrives.
I know from experience that uprooting what I began planting 44 years ago and tended to with great love and care has not been easy. Yet a light illuminates this new path to help me find my way: it is the light of gratitude.
Gratitude for the beautiful home, family and community that my husband and I created and shared for so many years. Gratitude for the experiences of living in and loving the desert and its surroundings. Gratitude for knowing that life is precarious and precious and we can better survive the former if we focus on and celebrate the latter.
My sister-in-law inspired a practice that really helped me as I said goodbye to each piece of furniture, dish and chachke that I owned. The practice is called “bless and release,” and it made the process of “uprooting the planted” so much easier and more meaningful. Simply described, the process went like this: I acknowledged each item and thanked it for its use, beauty, functionality, purpose. Then, I let it go.
What I learned through the process of letting go is a profound truth: We never really lose the most important things and people that we cherish in life when we let them go. They become a part of our inner landscape and we carry them with us.
Abiding love, relationships, memories and feelings are not limited to or defined by time, space, zip code or locale. Nor do they require external manifestations to remain vital and real to us. With time, they become integrated into the fabric of our being, a part of our essence that we carry with us forever.
For in the end, letting go is all we really have to hold on to.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
Content retrieved from: https://www.ijn.com/uprooting-the-planted/.
Amy Lederman Jan 17, 2019 Columns, Opinion, Reflections
It wasn’t more than a few days after my Dad died, just four months shy of his 100th birthday, that my brother and I began the formidable task of “going through Dad’s desk.”
The desk wasn’t really a desk at all: it was a repository for mountains of papers, financial statements, annual reports, brochures, medical journals and magazines dating back to 1963, covering everything from isometric exercise to safaris. Buried under a pile of backdated issues of the Wall Street Journal was the gift I had given Dad on his 70th birthday — a white plastic sign that stated Dad’s philosophy in bold black letters: “A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind!”
It made me reflect on my own compulsive need for tidiness and I breathed easier as my brother and I tackled the stacks, tossing years of articles marked “consider for the future” or “review later” into 33 gallon garbage bags.
It is deeply comforting to actually do something concrete after someone you love dies. It can be almost anything really, a task that requires physical concentration like a sink that needs fixing, drawers that need to be emptied or, in my case, a desk that needed cleaning.
A task has a beginning, middle and end and helps makes order out of the emotional chaos that often reigns in the aftermath of death. It gives you a purpose and a place to park your numbness and grief while hoping that in some way, your actions will honor or benefit the one you loved as well as those who live on.
My Dad was not a “woo-woo” kind of guy. He was more of a “no-nonsense, what you see is what you get” kind of guy. He rarely waxed prophetic, nor did he sentimentalize.
So it was more than a mere coincidence that one of the first things my brother found, placed intentionally on top of a year’s worth of Schwab statements, was a hand-written list of Dad’s Top Ten, carefully penned on aged legal paper. Unlike Dad’s other lists, it didn’t contain buy-sell prices or strategies to beat the market. It was more of summary of a century of life lessons learned, clearly meant to guide us in the days and years after he was gone.
Given the state of his desk, I almost laughed out loud when I read the opening paragraph:
“All compulsive behavior creates clutter. Make a conscious effort to identify and eliminate the cause of your clutter.”
The second paragraph really hit me hard because underlying its message was a sense of remorse and regret for not having followed his own maxim about time.
“Do not treat time casually like life is just a practice run. Live like you have but six months to live. Determine what you really would like to do and schedule time for it before it is too late. Do the important things NOW. Make the best use of your time by planning and rearranging for more efficiency.”
These paragraphs were followed by a list of 10 directives entitled: “Questions to assist in establishing values.”
True to form, only three of the 10 were questions, the remaining seven were clear directives; Dad’s guiding hand leading the way.
“What are your goals?”
“How would you like to spend your time?”
“If you could do but one thing today, what would it be? Do it now.”
Clearly, the clock was ticking for Dad.
The paper wasn’t dated and I can’t help but wonder when Dad wrote it. Was he a young man trying to craft principles to establish his career, family and life? Was it after he retired when he had more free time and resources? Was it, as I sense, in preparation for his own demise, during the many hours that physical energy eluded him but mental acuity did not?
In some wa, this was Dad’s last attempt to teach his children, whom he knew would find it, the most important things he knew at the end of his life. It was Dad’s Best Practices For Living Life to the Fullest.
I ask myself why Dad never spoke about this before he died. What would he have wanted to do that he never did? It will remain one of the conversations I wish we could have had when he was still alive.
It would have opened up so much in terms of knowing how he really felt about life, what were his best decisions, his biggest disappointments. Sadly, I will never know.
But at least I have the list.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
Content retrieved from: https://www.ijn.com/best-practices-for-living-life-to-the-fullest/.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman Special to the Arizona Daily Star / Jun 20, 2021 / Updated Jul 25, 2022
The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
My father passed away almost three years ago — just a few months shy of his hundredth birthday. As goal-oriented as he was, I am certain it bothered him that he never reached the “three-digit milestone.” But for the family who loved him, it was a blessing that he let go when he did.
As is typical after a parent dies, I found myself going through drawers and file cabinets that were often “off limits” during my life. Among the folders of old tax returns, outdated warranties and vacation brochures were several items that I will always treasure.
There was a hand-written list, carefully penned on aged legal paper, that was a summary of life lessons meant to guide us after he was gone. Who knew that Dad, a totally secular man, would leave us an Ethical Will leading with the words: “Do not treat time casually like life is just a practice run. Live like you have but six months to live.”
There was a crinkled manila envelope that I didn’t open until a year after he died that contained the journal Dad kept when he jumped a freight train at the age of 15 and headed west to live on a ranch in Kremmling, Colorado. I wonder now what my grandparents, who rarely left their small brick house in Paterson, N.J., felt when Dad sent them postcards with 2-cent stamps that said: “Please send money!”
The journal contained quotes from books he had read, maps of places he visited and thoughts about his life and future. As a young man, Dad was both serious and adventuresome. He used the journal as one might use a therapy session — to question and process the uncertainties, mysteries, accomplishments and disappointments of life.
Until I read Dad’s journal, I had no idea that he had been so intentional in keeping track of his life or the evolution of his relationships.
“Search out a forgotten friend.” “Keep a promise.” “Fight for a principle.” “Forget an old grudge.” And my favorite: “Examine your demands on others and vow to reduce them.”
Dad was a hard-core realist, not prone to waxing poetic or speaking in emotions. But the journal made me appreciate that he felt that his experiences, questions and ideas were worthy of memorializing. And the fact that he kept this small black book for almost nine decades suggests he may have wanted us to learn more about him, even after he was gone.
As we age, we are often inclined to review our life — in search of its meaning as well as its relevancy and impact on others. We will never know for sure if, how and whom we affect. But there are ways we can impart what is important to us that can offer comfort, wisdom and meaning to those we love. Because everyone has stories to tell that are worthy of being shared and understood.
We are the sum of our stories: They help form our identity and provide a context to understand our place in the world. Stories can be transcendent — living beyond time, place and generations. But they can also be imminent — establishing intimate, immediate connections between family, friends and members of the community.
I was fortunate in that my dad shared his stories with me over meals, chores, visits and phone calls during the course of his life. But not everyone is a story teller by nature, and it is often difficult to find an entry point.
It is never too late to share the stories of our lives. You can write them down, record or video them, even have a professional interview and record your family history. An easy first step is to share photos of people and events that affected your life. Favorite family traditions, jobs and career changes and vacations and trips are simple topics that can often lead to deeper, more meaningful conversations.
When I go back and read my father’s journal, I feel less lonely because I learn about the person he used to be. But I can also see how much like him I am. And now that he is gone, that is both a comfort and a blessing.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman is an author, public speaker and attorney with roots in Tucson.
Content retrieved from: https://thisistucson.com/opinion/local/tucson-opinion-looking-thru-the-pages-of-dads-life-and-wisdom/article_5d360d42-cf6f-11eb-b1a3-2f766930b2ba.html.
I grew up in a house where words were the currency by which my brother and I gained recognition. Unlike most of our peers’ parents, whose approval was dished out for making the varsity team or getting straight A’s, my dad’s highest form of praise came as a result of the words we used and how we used them. It’s no surprise, I suppose, that my brother got his doctorate in English linguistics and I make my living as a wordsmith by writing and teaching.
But I’m not complaining. I absolutely loved the form and sound of words as they rolled around in my mouth. Gargantuan, entropy, neophyte, sophomoric. Each word offered worlds of possibilities, in phrases and sentences I could casually throw out like confetti at a parade.
I waited for the chance to put my expanding lexicon into action. When my brother relentlessly teased me, I’d retort with childish indignation: “What a gargantuan oral cavity you have!” His response — a silent slug in the arm — was predictable, but it was my father’s approving nod from behind the pages of the Wall Street Journal that made the sting worthwhile.
In “You Can’t Go Home Again,” Thomas Wolfe wrote these powerful words: “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of time and memory.” While it’s true that we can’t go back to the time and places of our childhood, we can recapture a part of our youth if we remember the words of wisdom our parents shared with us as we were growing up.
In my home, an abundance of wisdom was served along with the four food groups at the dinner table. When work was going well for my dad, when our family was happy and healthy, he would look at us wistfully and say: “If I could only stop the clock right now …” Those words remain with me as a reminder of the many blessings in my life.
When I came home from school crying because my glasses were stolen, or years later, when my luggage was lost on a trip overseas, he would calmly remark: “Just remember, if you have a problem that money can fix, it’s the best type of problem to have.”
My mother offered another type of wisdom that often sounded more like admonitions than aphorisms. Walking through Loehman’s she would counsel me quietly: “You can never be too rich, too thin or own too many silk blouses,” a maxim that was lost on a girl who rejected the establishment and loved tie-dyed t-shirts. But there were also insightful truisms that I think of to this day, such as the time my mom looked at me knowingly when I came home from college and said: “Everyone has a public life, a private life and a secret life. You will too.”
Jewish tradition is replete with wisdom teachings, the most famous of which is contained in Pirkei Avot, or Ethics of the Fathers. The sayings found in this final book of the Mishna offer moral advice and insights that are spiritual, practical and timeless. Over 2,000 years ago, people needed wise words to navigate the seas of uncertainty just as we do today, which is why Ben Zoma taught: “Who is wise? He who learns from every man … Who is a hero? He who controls his passions.” And why Rabbi Hillel cautioned: “Don’t judge your fellowman until you are in his place …” and reminded us, “Don’t say I will study when I have time, for you may never find the time.”
I love the wisdom of our sages that has expanded from generation to generation and been passed down to us. From Rashi to Maimonides to the Baal Shem Tov and Rav Kook, from Abraham Joshua Heschel to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, wisdom teachings have informed Jewish living and enhanced our ability to see beyond the immediacy of our daily lives.
And whenever I feel upset or frustrated with what’s going on in my own life, I remember my father’s words and am comforted. “This too shall pass,” he would tell me with an assuring voice. And in time, it always does.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman is an author, Jewish educator, public speaker and attorney who lives in Tucson. Her columns in the AJP have won awards from the American Jewish Press Association, the Arizona Newspapers Association and the Arizona Press Club for excellence in commentary. Visit her website at amyhirshberglederman.com.
Content retrieved from: https://azjewishpost.com/2011/words-of-wisdom-never-grow-old/.
If you had told me a year ago that I would change my life by selling my Tucson home to be closer to my Mom in New Jersey or that I would spend the winter bundled up in Boston rather than hiking in the sunshine, I would have responded: “And pigs will fly!” But there it is and here I am.
Change itself is a paradox. Nothing is as consistently permanent as change and yet our relationship to change is fluid and morphs as we encounter different phases of life.
Some changes are pure serendipity; others, intentional. I certainly never expected when I hitchhiked across country after college that I would end up in Tucson or that a nice Jewish doctor from L.A. would move across state lines to marry me. Yet in the middle of my law career, I made the conscious choice to follow my heart and “study Jewish,” which changed the trajectory of my life in ways too numerous to count.
When we are young and starting out — acquiring education, careers, and family, change is usually positive. It is the currency by which we better our chances and expand our opportunities. A new job, a new relationship, a new home are exciting stepping stones to personal and professional growth.
In our middle years, if we are blessed with good health and sufficient resources, we often see change as a refinement of what we have already created, a way to improve and enhance our families, careers, and life experiences. But in our later years, change begins to take on a new, somewhat challenging meaning, as it is often heralded by diminution of health, loss of capacity, and in the end, loss of life itself.
“For everything there is a time and a season,” King Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes as he enumerates various way stations and aspects of life such as birth and death, dancing and mourning, keeping and relinquishing, planting and reaping. But Solomon also includes a “time to uproot the planted,” something we tend not to think about as we lay down our roots, build our families and careers, and develop community.
Uprooting the planted is a stark image and beckons us to consider that the deeper the roots — the more invested we are in the life we have created — the harder it may be to uproot what we have planted when that time arrives. I know from experience that uprooting what I began planting 44 years ago and tended to with great love and care has not been easy. Yet a light illuminates this new path to help me find my way: it is the light of gratitude.
Gratitude for the beautiful home, family, and community that my husband and I created and shared for so many years. Gratitude for the experiences of living in and loving the desert and its surroundings. Gratitude for knowing that life is precarious and precious and we can better survive the former if we focus on and celebrate the latter.
My sister-in-law inspired a practice that really helped me as I said goodbye to each piece of furniture, dish, and totchke that I owned. It is called “bless and release,” and it made the process of “uprooting the planted” so much easier and more meaningful. Simply described the process went like this: I acknowledged each item and thanked it for its use, beauty, functionality, purpose. And then, I let it go.
What I learned through the process of letting go is a profound truth: that we never really lose the most important things and people that we cherish in life when we let them go. They become a part of our inner landscape and we carry them with us. Abiding love, relationships, memories, and feelings are not limited to or defined by time, space, zip code, or locale. Nor do they require external manifestations to remain vital and real to us. With time, they become integrated into the fabric of our being, a part of our essence that we carry with us forever.
For in the end, letting go is all we really have to hold on to.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman is an author, Jewish educator, public speaker, and attorney . Visit her website at www.amyhirshberglederman.com.
Content retrieved from: https://azjewishpost.com/2020/letting-go-is-all-we-have-to-hold-on-to/.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman / Seniors / May 19, 2020
The job description might read something like this: “Looking for someone 24/7 with the patience of a saint, the wisdom of the Dali Lama, the goodness of Mother Teresa, and the ability to find the humor in the most difficult of situations. Must be fluent in the language of love.”
How many of us will find ourselves taking on the arduous role of caretaker for a loved one, family member or friend in our lifetimes? How many of us can lay claim to even a few of the qualifications that are necessary to do so?
My own experience involved caring for my husband, who, at the age of 61, was diagnosed with cancer. I never really thought of myself as a caregiver during the 3 years, 7 months and 11 days of his illness. I saw myself as his wife; devoted to caring for him as part of a loving marriage and lifetime commitment. But statistically, I fell into the category of the more than 60 million unpaid caregivers who, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, are actively engaged in caring for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend, often without training or support.
Caregivers typically help with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, meal preparations, household tasks and managing finances, but the real work comes in what can’t be measured by cooked meals or loads of wash. Because at the heart and soul of caregiving is the deeply human undertaking of understanding, honoring and dignifying another person at what is often their most vulnerable time of life.
Caregiving is as unique as the individual for whom one is caring. In the simplest of terms, this means that one size fits…one. A caregiver may often need to be a fierce advocate, a diligent gatekeeper, the one who has to initiate the most difficult conversations about things never discussed before in a family. Caregiving challenges us to learn about medications, wheelchairs, medical tests and scans, bodily functions and often, the details of death and dying. In short, it’s a crash course in life, love, and often, a loss for which most of us are never prepared.
But caregiving can be a deeply rewarding experience because it requires us to draw upon our deepest, most compassionate and often most loving selves. Regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof, taking care of another person who has lost the capacity to care for themselves has the potential to be a truly holy, spiritual experience.
I am not an expert in the field, nor do I pretend to be. But during the years I cared for my husband, I found that these strategies kept both of us going strong.
A positive attitude is often the most important ingredient in the recipe of caregiving.
Communication is key: For both the caregiver and the patient, it is essential to cultivate respectful ways of communicating needs, feelings, concerns and frustrations.
Use available tools and resources. Online help, family, friends and neighbors, list serves to share information like Caring Bridge and support groups can help reduce the daily demands.
Be open to change and let go of the outcome. A caregiver who is able to be flexible and adaptive will often reduce the stress of the situation.
Don’t spend unnecessary time or waste hours going down the internet “rabbit hole” looking for answers. Ask experts, doctors and medical staff for guidance.
Be open to health care alternatives such as acupuncture, massage, hypnosis, CBD and other holistic remedies.
Plan something simple to look forward to every day. A new recipe, a television show, or a walk around the park can bring joy to a day.
Take care of the caregiver. Make time to engage in self-care every week. Ask a friend to cover while you take a walk, go to a movie, or do something that feels like it’s “just for you!”
Focus on the good things, no matter how small. Express gratitude whenever possible.
Remember this beautiful quote by Vivian Greene: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass … it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”
Caregiving is so much more than managing daily activities, household tasks and health care. It is a chance to deeply appreciate and value life while offering dignity, love and acceptance to another human being.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman has written more than 300 columns and essays that have been published nationwide, amyhirshberglederman.com.
Content retrieved from: https://orjewishlife.com/the-ten-commandments-of-caregiving/.
Amy Lederman Oct 19, 2017 Columns, Opinion, Reflections
In 1980, I began my career as a law clerk working at the Arizona Court of Appeals. My job was to research issues for the judge and work on draft opinions, which would then be fully reviewed, analyzed and edited until he was fully satisfied with the result. I spent countless hours examining case law and statutes, attempting, to the best of my young and inexperienced mind, to offer the correct analysis and conclusion. I was never more than a few inches away from the total fear of being wrong. Scholarly uncertainty motivated me; it demanded and inspired some of my best and clearest thinking.
As a practicing lawyer, to be right or certain about a fact, legal interpretation or desired outcome, is tantamount to being successful.
Over the years, however, I began to realize that being right was less important to me than being real. Being real often meant being unsure or uncertain; clearly not a quality my clients desired or expected when they hired me.
When I left the practice of law in 1994 to pursue my passion for Jewish learning, I knew that I would relish the freedom of starting from a place of not knowing. Graduate studies in Jewish education couldn’t have been a more perfect fit.
It wasn’t until my husband, Ray, was diagnosed with cancer, however, that I experienced the full force of living with chronic uncertainty. For in those three-and-a-half years of daily unknowns, I learned that the only thing of which I was certain was that I would somehow manage to handle each challenge as it arose.
There were times when it seemed like we were living in a minefield, tip toeing cautiously through life for fear of what might explode next. What if the CT scan came back positive? Were the side effects of treatment worse than the cure? Was there a clinical trial to help us? And the question to which we would never know the answer: How much more time would we have together?
The one thing we both knew with absolute certainty was that in the very space of not knowing — in that most precious precariousness of life — we had the chance to become our best selves. To be present to what we had, to love fully and truly, realizing that we would never know the answers to many of our questions.
After Ray died, I took many trips; staying in motion seemed to help. Sometimes I traveled to remember, other times I traveled to forget. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had to listen to my instincts. No book or grief group could tell me what I needed to do. I had to find that out for myself.
I visited my childhood summer stomping grounds and spent a week in Cape Cod. On a cold and rainy October morning, I walked on a beach in Truro that I had loved as an 18-year-old camp counselor, awash in summer romance and suntan oil. I thought about how back then, there had been no Tucson or law degree, no husband or children — not even an imagined fantasy of which they were a part.
As the tide washed clean my footsteps, it struck me that someday, perhaps 20 years from now, I might find myself on this same beach, reflecting back on all of the yet unknown and beautiful things that would and could still happen in my life. In that moment, I realized that in order to survive, we have to stay open to what we don’t know.
Slowly but surely I have come to recognize that uncertainty is not to be dreaded or feared; it is to be embraced as the portal to possibility.
It is the silver lining of my loss and the gateway to a life yet to be lived.
Staying open to possibilities and not knowing means that anything is possible.
In the end, it is how we react to the uncertainties of life that enables us to evolve and thrive.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
Content retrieved from: https://www.ijn.com/learning-embrace-uncertainty/.
Amy Lederman Sep 12, 2019 Columns, Opinion, Reflections
In October, 1965, Columbia Records released a hit song by the Byrds called “Turn, Turn, Turn.” But while my friends and I loved its beautiful harmony, I never suspected that its words would accompany me through life, spanning decades of historical and personal events from the Vietnam War to the birth of my children and the death of my husband.
Initially written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950’s, “Turn, Turn, Turn” is derived directly from the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3: 1-8. Called Kohelet in Hebrew, its authorship is attributed to King Solomon, and is included as one of several “Wisdom Books” in the Writings (Kituvim), along with Proverbs and Job. It stands as a remarkable compendium of insightful poetic prose and offers a philosophy that contemplates the cyclical nature of life and the precarious quality of human existence.
Originally written in Hebrew, Kohelet has been translated with varying degrees of sensitivity to its organic poetry and meaning. The King James version is most often cited, its words forming the lyrics of the Byrd’s song. “To everything, (turn, turn, turn), there is a season (turn, turn, turn) and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Biblical scholar and critic Robert Alter, whose translation and commentary of the Tanach (complete Hebrew Bible) is a literary achievement, translates Ecclesiastes 8:1 a bit differently from the King James: “Everything has a season, and a time for every matter under the heavens.”
I like Alter’s rendition because its first four words provide a succinct message and positive spin on what has become clear to me about life: that change is inevitable and necessary, although not always easy; and if we are to evolve, we must adapt and accept this reality. Everything has a season.
When we are younger, we tend to engage in “seasons of acquisition” — attaining education and careers while building homes and families. We fill up our homes with furniture, art, toys for our kids. Friendships, too, are acquired for various reasons, from professional advancement to social intimacy.
I remember the early years of childrearing, when many of the friendships my husband and I developed were the result of the families we met through our children. Hours spent at T-ball, dance recitals and rehearsals brought us together as we worried about getting the right uniforms, costumes and carpool.
Some of those people remain my closest friends to this day. Others have drifted away and are no longer part of my life.
A quote by Holley Gerth sums up this phenomenon beautifully: “There are friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime.”
Growing older provides a perspective that comes from having lived in the trenches of life through its many “seasons.”
For many baby boomers, retirement is just around the corner and with that, a new season of life begins — a season of possibility.
For those fortunate enough to have the health and the means, there are limitless possibilities to spend time and resources differently — to travel, volunteer, spend more time with family and friends, exercise more regularly.
Many have the privilege of watching their children marry and have children of their own. Ask any grandparent and you will hear that the season of grandparenting is one of the most cherished of all.
But age also brings an awareness of the precariousness of life as we enter a season of change that often heralds diminution and loss. For while the retirement years may offer new possibilities, they can be accompanied by limitations as well. While there is much written about what we can do to counter aging positively — from simplifying daily demands to engaging in physical exercise and increasing intellectual stimulation — there is no way to stop the ticking of the clock.
Everything has a season: Jewish wisdom dating back thousands of years offers a mantra to live by at every age and stage of life. and reminds us of the temporal nature of things. Change is inevitable.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
Content retrieved from: https://www.ijn.com/to-everything-there-is-a-season/.