Twenty Summers

That’s what my friend said when I mused that I probably had only twenty or so more years to live. No, she said, think of it this way: you have only twenty more summers to live.

That was rather sobering. The things I love, the people I care about, the plans and dreams and ‘somedays’ suddenly had an urgency to them. I thought of the books I want to read. The islands I want to swim to. The fruits I want to savor and the song, Amazing Grace, that I want to learn to play beautifully on the piano... Twenty years felt like enough time to get it all in, later. Twenty summers did not.

Neither do thirty or forty summers, for that matter. They can slink by really, really fast. Maybe they already have. Suddenly, there are only twenty, or ten. But this is not meant to depress or elicit panic. I had been complaining to my friend about this and that, life woes and everyday struggles. Yet somewhere in my psyche I believed, self-assuredly, that I had another couple of good decades before me for things to be alright and for me to enjoy living. I could bemoan all that was not working now because I had time to be happy later.

As the  Buddha said: the problem is, you think you have time. Priorities change over a lifetime; the rush to establish a career, raise kids, acquire things, and meet standards of success is not wrong. It just always seems that waking up to the really good stuff we are missing while pursuing these goals only comes when we have but twenty summers left, or less.

I now think sometimes, if there were something I definitely did not want to miss out on in this life, what would that be, and how do I live that now? When I ponder this honestly, from the edge of a cliff that feels solid and timeless but drops into a mist of uncertainty, I realize that what I want to feel in this one-of-few remaining summers is the bond I sense when my dog’s eyes lock with mine. I want to let more glorious sunsets take my breath away, and hold a spring breeze in my hair. I want to slowly sip tea with a good friend and belly-laugh until we cry. Hear music that moves me to tears – or to dance. Gasp at the brilliance of the Snow Moon on a clear mountain night. Hug my daughter while time stands still. Listen with awe to the silence of a snowfall in the city. And rejoice in watching a child suddenly believe in himself if even for a minute. That.

In truth, we may have only twenty summers left to live, or thirty or one. Time comes with no guarantees. Except that what is left for us to experience is likely available to us this very minute, if we pay attention. Twenty summers are made of todays and minutes, and the first one is happening as I write.