Recently, I was describing to a friend that I see myself as a lifelong learner. I can’t imagine getting to some point (a certain age, adulthood, retirement) and deciding that “I’ve arrived and I’ve got it — this thing called life”.
Yet, I am aware that some folks do “arrive”. They stop expanding. They go through the motions of their days, today no different than yesterday. Perhaps you hear them complain about how the world is changing and making life difficult.
Some folks continue learning in one area of life but “arrive” in another. Maybe they are socially active, always meeting new friends, but ideas about religion or politics, clothing or food choices remain static.
At this point, my friend suggested that this would be like the knick knacks on our shelves collecting dust. Stuff sits. Never moves. Dust falls. While life goes on around the shelf, the world of “the shelf” is static with the exception of the growing dust layer.
I don’t want to be a dusty knick knack in an ever changing world!
Do you?
As I approach a milestone birthday and vision the next decade of life, I am asking myself these questions and invite you into them as well:
- What possessions have outlived their usefulness and are collecting dust?
- What relationships exist but are no longer being nurtured, no longer deepening, no longer receiving our truth, integrity, or the edge of our learning – metaphorically collecting dust?
- What ideas, beliefs and habits are stale or irrelevant and limiting us, energetically suffocating us as the dust they are?