Via “Want to talk?” on October 17.
Hi Kelley,
I did not know your birthday until this moment. September 21 was just a few days earlier. My warm thought goes your way for a happy 49 – I was there almost 100 years ago or so it seems. But It gets better when you actually reach the milestone 50 – suddenly everything falls in place, one understands the riddle of life (i.e., why certain things work and others don’t) and one is liberated (just like Spinoza says,”… the more the mind knows, the better it understands the natural forces. And the more it understands life, the easier it is to get rid of useless things..”)!
Enjoy this and the coming years. I will be sure to remember your birthday next year. You are sweet, warm, and wonderful. My best.
Amit
Thanks for your good thoughts on the common cure for the seasonal cold. But this year it seemed to last forever. Anyhow, I am on the mend now, I will regain my full strength in about 37.74 more hours.
Hello, Amit, and thank you for the warm wishes.
All my decades have been interesting and full of growth, and so far I find that I enjoy myself and other people and life in general more as I get older. My 40’s have certainly been a wild ride… but more than that too. I’ve come to a deeper sense of myself and my place in the world. And I am trying to learn (again!) the best balance for me between doing and being. I feel as though there is progress there.
And so I hope that my 50’s will keep me on this path. It would be lovely to understand everything and feel liberated from the false constraints! It’s interesting to understand more and more on a gut level (not just an intellectual level) how many of those constraints are only there because I allow it.
Nicola said to me the other day that the 50’s are the decade when women become invisible, before emerging again in their later decades as streamlined, focused, clearly themselves (I am paraphrasing now, but that’s how I heard it). I don’t know if this is true, but I am certainly feeling resistant to it. I don’t want to be invisible. I’m finally seeing myself; I want other people to see me too.
I guess I’ll find out. Perhaps part of the liberation is that such things no longer apply to us unless we apply them to ourselves. Perhaps I will find they are some of Spinoza’s useless things that I may get rid of. I hope so.
I’m glad you are feeling better.
Best,
Kelley