Thursday's Reflection: Because I Can

An email from a friend one morning this week said she was still in her jams and reading "because I can and want to to be." Another friend, newly retired, said she intends to spend her days painting because she can. My husband and I spent a weekday afternoon with friends roaming river towns and enjoying the beauties of fall because we could. This morning I turned off my alarm and slept another 45 minutes because I can. 

What an interesting time of life--to so often be able to choose what you want to do, instead of doing what you have to do, need to do. Obviously, there are still things that are more on the side of have to do and need to do, for that is life, that is the way being an adult is, but aren't you delighted to discover all the choices you have now as your life becomes more spacious? Yes, I hear retired people say, almost gleefully, how busy they are, busier than they have ever been, but it seems to me it is a different kind of busy. Now the choices are made based more on passion and interest and a desire to connect or grow or give than on responsibility and survival. Or at least there is the potential for that to be the case. 

When talking about being retired I often hear the word "liberating." "I feel liberated," someone will say, especially if retirement has been a choice rather than forced in some way. To feel liberated, instead of lost, however, requires being awake to oneself and the present moment. 

As I often do, I turn to Joan Chittister's book, The Gift of Years, Growing Older Gracefully. http://www.benetvision.org

      We find ourselves at the greatest moment of choice we've ever had, at least since we left home on our own, since we identified what we wanted to do in life, since we made the great career move, since we decided, finally, to settle down. Now we have to decide how to live without being told how it's done.
    The slate is clean. The days are ours. The task now is to learn how to live again. p. 28

     The truth is that this new stage of life liberates in a way no other stage of growth can possibly do. All the striving is over now. We don't have to have the way we spend our time approved anymore. We don't have to work, produce, or get ahead anymore. The only thing required of us now is the blooming of the self. Like autumn flowers, rich in color, deep in tone, sturdy in the wind, our lives, not only have new color, they bring with them the kind of interior depth a fast-moving world so dearly needs.
      If we decide that life is over once the accoutrements of middle age are over--the career, the title, the children, the climb up the social ladder--and that there is nothing else worth doing, that the very definition of who we are has been summarily foreclosed, then if course it will be. We have ended ourselves.
       But if we can bring ourselves to strike out now to try on the rest of ourselves, there is a whole new world ahead of us. Parts of ourselves that have been so carefully hidden from others during all the years of responsibility and productivity--and just as often as not hidden from ourselves as well--are now ours for the trying.
       And it is the willingness, the eagerness to try, that makes all the difference. pp. 46-47

      This may, in fact, be the first moment in our lives when we are really free to choose work that brings out the best in us and so brings out the best in the world around us. We become co-creators of the world." p. 151

I am still in my pajamas as I write this post and once I publish it, I may decide to fix a cup of hot chocolate and sit in my favorite chair and read the book I started last night or I may get dressed  and take a walk, a walking meditation, or I may choose to work on the assignments for the writing class I am taking. These are "because I can" moments. They lift me, make me smile, and often restore me, but they can also stretch my imagination and spirit and lead me to a more profound "because I can" opening in my life.  

An Invitation
What are you currently doing because you can? Are you living your life more from a perspective of because you can or because you don't want to? Do you know the difference? I would love to know. 

An Edith Wharton Morning, a post by Nancy L. Agneberg

Reading and writing in bed on a cold, cold morning is the height of luxury as far as I am concerned. I gather my journal and the book I am currently reading as part of my meditation and reflection time, along with a letter or two to write and maybe, if the day ahead is really spacious, also the book I am reading for pleasure. In this case, that book is the amazing The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis. 

     I call this time an Edith Wharton Morning. 

     Edith Wharton was a prize winning American novelist, short story writer and designer who lived from 1862 to 1937, a time of graciousness for those who could afford it. When I visited her home The Mount, an open to the public museum, in Lenox, Massachusetts, I stood in her bedroom and imagined breakfast being delivered to her in the morning by a maid who obviously didn't have quite the same gracious life. Edith, no doubt, was wearing some sort of frilly bed jacket (Do they even exist any more?) and asked the maid to bring her her writing and reading materials after she had opened the heavy drapes, giving Edith a view of her famous gardens. One of Edith's good friends was the equally famous American writer, Henry James, and they wrote to each other faithfully over the years. I imagine her also responding to written invitations to tea or a dinner party and in turn inviting others to dine. Perhaps she wrote a thank you note or two, for one did that promptly and diligently in those days. 

     If you are a fan of Downton Abbey, and I certainly hope you are, you will no doubt envision Lady Grantham in bed in the mornings while the rest of the family, dressed and ready for the day, is served breakfast in a dining room.  

     My Edith Wharton Mornings are not quite the same as what I have described. No one brings me a breakfast tray or opens heavy drapes. I am in flannel pajamas and later will have to make the bed myself. However, like Edith, before entering the day, the world, I spend quiet time connecting both with myself and with others in my world. A birthday card here, a note in response to a Christmas letter there, a word of sympathy and love to another. I don't know if Edith used that quiet time for prayer, but my Edith Wharton Mornings are also for prayer. Prayers rise from my heart as I lean back into my pillow. 

     I first named these favorite "slow to enter the day" mornings as Edith Wharton Mornings after my cancer surgery 10 years ago. We lived at Sweetwater Farm then and the view from bed was of our gardens and the back pasture.  Sometimes the goats or llamas or even Asa the donkey would be in view. My bedside table contained all I needed--the books and journal and writing materials. All my thank you notes for the many kindnesses shown during that time were written during those easy mornings. A slow morning was part of the healing. I measured my strength by the length of the time in bed, eventually returning to the former routines of getting up and dressing right away and leaving the bedroom, bed made, laundry in my arms for the washer. 
     Current Edith Wharton Mornings are a matter of choice--a choice that was not in the viewfinder when I was in the midst of raising a family and working full time. Most mornings now I am at Curves by 6 and have already made the bed, but sometimes a slower pace is desired or perhaps even needed. I am grateful for the privilege of choice in my life and realize that I don't exercise it as often as I could. I often move through my days as if I was still in those crazy, busy, and yes, special days of my life. This is a new and yes, a special time of my life; a time when "shoulds" are not as dominant and a time that allows for spaciousness, for choice of how I want to enjoy my time, for Edith Wharton Mornings. 
     What new choices are possible in your life now? In what ways are you living the way you have always lived? Is it time to consider new choices?