I may need help (11 thoughts on the final year of my 40s).

I'm 49, and I may need some extra assistance as I go into the last decade of my 40s. These are reflections and reminders and requests for assistance.

Acceptance / Challenge.

Help me to have the self-confidence and emotional wherewithal to accept myself in the form I am, to find contentment in my physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual health, and yet to also keep fighting and learning to not settle for who I am, and to reject the creeping mindset that there is no possibility for growth.

Chaos manifested.

Help me to be confident to present the person I am with firm stature and resolute jaw, and yet to also maintain a self-awareness of the small vanities that matter to me, and to be able to acknowledge such things. Matters such as hair and its growth, or lack of growth, in places seen and unseen. 


Help me in accepting the messiness and chaos of my hair as a part(ial) analogy for life. That same messiness and chaos does not need to have similar generosity extended to hair out of nose, ears and other such tertiary locations. All respect, to those who are comfortable, in going wild in every way. As I said, most of us have our small vanities in some form. 


All age, all life university.

Help me to continue listening to and learning from people of every age. I wish to always gain valuable insights from the mindful presence of many ages and from everyone, at least for a short period of time. That includes one hour old infants and 115 year old jujitsu masters.

On the road, part I.

Help me to be confident enough to continue using my blinkers when I change lanes, regardless of whether it seems like every other male between age 15 and 55 is not.

Genuine joy.

Help me to be happy for friends who are either retired, are talking retirement, or are taking large amounts of each year to travel and do such things. 
Genuinely, sincerely, help me, to be happy with this, because I am happy to be a dad and to have healthy, kind, strong children. And I have almost a dozen years remaining before the last of them finishes high school.

Completion.

Give me the mental strength to be able to finish things. It can be hard and discouraging to be at a certain point in life. 
Some of the important things, to me, have been very difficult to keep going. Help me, to be at peace, with the portion I've not been able to finish, help me to have strength and resilience and wisdom to push through and find ways to complete the things, the unfinished things, that are important enough to try and finish.

Full circle(s).

Help me to support and to lift up others. This seems like an easy one, but can be difficult to put into tangible practice. I have received great amounts of help in my life; I feel that I have a great deal to give still, and I want to help in a way that empowers those in my social ecosystem and makes all of us stronger.

Don’t cut every tie you don’t get.

Help me to not dismiss friends that I don't understand. I don't need to spend huge amounts of time trying to understand everything. There's a lot that doesn't make sense right now that nobody really understands and it shouldn't make sense. The world is upside down in a lot of ways. 
There's also many things that are easy to dismiss because whether they're expressions - “6-7!” - or whether they're music or fashion styles or trends in films or education…help me to help me to not have kneejerk reactions. Help me to remember that I can be grounded and be strong rooted without needing to be dogmatic and close-minded.

Family times 9 billion.

Help me to find a way to hold and keep and even build new relationships with people who hold sometimes reprehensible beliefs. Help me to sometimes love them; not to tolerate or be okay with or to choose silence as an option in the face of despicable views, but to recognize and remember they too are children of God. For the ones I'm sometimes closest to, help me to find strong threads for building what might be very specific connections, but help me to do a better job at that, while also not watering down the principles and convictions, I know matter and support of principles that are bedrock; that are reflective of the Gospel and born of a respect for humanity. 


On the road, part II.

Help me to have the confidence to honk my horn when I need to and the wisdom to not use my horn when I feel like it, but when it's not really necessary.

Production over consumption, connection over networking.

Help me to spend more time creating. Creating art, creating new relationships, new connections, strong ties with old ones. 
Help me to create and to help others create spaces that are hospitable and welcoming and warm and bring people together. Help me to be respectful and appreciative, to be complimentary about what others do well, and to remember there's no connection between the success of others, and my own picture of myself, my own self-portrait, my own perception of my quote unquote success.

As a bonus, help me to get back on track with framing life’s happenings as opportunities and ways to grow and learn and forge stronger connections.

Helping others is important.
Asking for help is also important.
They work together in symbiosis. By asking for help, we make it okay to both give and receive as an ongoing circle. As Andy Griffith once interpreted in a great album of old hymns…”Let the circle be unbroken.” Different context, but I like it in this one as well. Let’s make circles that are unbroken, but also open to becoming bigger and more inviting and inclusive. Such is life at its most grand. Let us help make bigger circles and better lives, not just for ourselves dancing as the leads on our own stage, but shining lights on the productions and theatrics of others.

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You think it, you say it and say it again and you repeat it. Then you share. So here you are, and 49, here I am. Me, and a little help from my friends. Thanks, buds, pals, peers, colleagues, classmates, family, and all else for being on this road. I hope it’s a long and winding one.