Senior Healthy Living

Among the things that make me important is my assumption  of tasks, chores, responsibilities where I live.  I do them, not because I have been urged to take them on.  I do them because it is my contribution to living in an environment of  a shared making life an experience of common investment.  It is recognizing that doing things for the common good, where I live, makes for a happier experience for all who share in it. I don’t do those things because I am expected to.  Nor do I do them because I am somehow seen as a better or even a “good” person.  No what I do, I do because it is my share, my piece of the pie, it is evidence of my part ownership in this enterprise we call marriage.

Each of us does what he/she does not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a a sense of part investor and worker, part partner and contributor to making the whole experience more ours and less just mine.  It is what makes me important, because I am important to the other.  I am appreciated by the other.  I need to let the other know I carry no burden, have no regret, hold no grudge.  My part is mine and it helps me be a person of worth.  I find that worth not so much out of what I do, but because I am half of a whole.  What I do demonstrates not trying to earn anything, but just to be there to do and be and share and live in the presence of another for whom life has great joy and reveals the enormity of how precious life really is when mutually taken on and given meaning in common.

Seniors Create Their Own Happiness

Silly.  Not at all.  Overstated, quite the contrary.  Having the chance to be linked to another with whom life takes on its dimensions of meaning and purpose, gives shape and form and substance to person-hood.  Doing that means taking on a part of what it takes to keep tranquility and shared responsibility a vital part of that relationship.

I do the dishes (yes we have a dishwasher) with great flourish.  I empty and put away the various items that cook my food, store some of the meal, lend beauty to our table.  I help in all kinds of ways around the house and lawn.  Boasting?  No.  Reporting.  That is my part.  This is where I come in.  She likewise takes on her part and more.  She is so dedicated and competent and committed that sometime I feel I do not do quite enough.  There is no enmity.  Just love.  Just deep down awareness that something has been created here that needs and gets everyday nurturing. It is one of the gifts of life for which there is no way to ever say thank you enough. The sufficiency of that thank you comes in the experience of sharing life, all of it, as it comes and goes, as it plays itself out.  It is filled with splendid surprises and totally generous tokens of affection, pleasure, reward.

All of this is what makes me important.  It also contributes to being important.  And it is something I must remind myself comes my way with every passing day.  In our house it does happen often.  And it gives me that emotionally complete sense of self, which includes being important.