What If…

The more aware we become of how we are dealing with or perhaps we should say “not dealing with” the challenges associated with the graying of our population the more we find ourselves inclined to play a game called “What If …?”  Over the years we’ve found it to be a very helpful game.  Here’s an example of how it goes.

What if the only way we or any of us can prepare for the brave new world that lies ahead, a world in which 50% of our population and the population in most industrial countries in the world over 50 years of age for the first time in history, is to identify ways that we can be fully responsible for the quality of own lives as we grow older?

Of course, this is not an easy question to answer.  Nor are many other questions associated with this subject, but since it is clear to us that we will not find our answers to our truest and deepest questions out there in all of the noise and confusion of the outside world.  Nor will we find answers in the chilling silence that surrounds the topics of how to live consciously and age wisely oin our ur institutional and business communities and even in most of the conversations that occur in the general public, we must turn to the one place where we can find answers.  Yes, we have to ask, be willing to listen within to the wisdom and guidance we receive from that still small inner voice within and then we have to have the courage to act on the suggestions, prompts and recommendations we receive.

So yesterday we took a long walk along some of the quiet dirt roads that wind their way through the hills around our home here in of Santa Fe and we turned inward. What we heard were series of “What If” questions that we shared with each other.  And as usual, these questions got our attention. 

What if…
we have a destiny, a specific reason and purpose for being alive?

What if…
your life is a gift, and each moment is a choice point, an opportunity to learn or avoid, to wake up to new levels of meaning and purpose, loving and consciousness or to keep on doing the habitual and the less than effective?  What if the real purpose for your life is not to follow someone else’s game plan or seek the approval of others, but to listen to your own tune and to share the fruits of what you learn with others?

What if…
making a difference is not just some childish wish you have to outgrow or give up in order to do succeed in ‘the real world’?  What if your dream is not only real, but your responsibility; something, in fact, you were born to do and that you can do it and live it no matter how long it takes or how long it’s been since you last paid it any attention to it?

What if…
life isn’t about how much
you make, what you own,
or what other people think
of you, but about how you
show up inside yourself and
in the world through your thoughts
words and actions every day?

See what we mean about these ‘What if’ questions?  The longer we walked and the more questions that came up, the more we realized that it doesn’t matter if these questions are easy or difficult to answer.  What matters is that they are our questions to answer.  At least they are ours to answer if we want to be able to arrive at the end of our lives and know that we have run the course and done, at least, some of what we were born to do. 

And the older we get, the more aware we become that it would be a real crime to come to those final moments of our lives and to admit that we had not asked often enough, that we had not listened carefully enough and that we had not had enough courage to follow the answers and contribute our notes to this remarkable, wondrous, mysterious and extraordinary song that is life?

What about you?  Do you ever find yourself hearing these kinds of “What if” questions?  Do you ever wonder what your answers will be when you get to the end of your road?   Do you ever wonder what your life will be like if you “do not go quietly”, but instead that you make a joyful noise in celebration of the precious gift that is your life?