The meaning of life...

You may realise from my previous writings that I am running at Midlife head-on to find some answers. Technically I may be past midlife, I don't know, but then I've known people who have died in their teens so I don't let those labels worry me any more.

This morning I was watching a spider swaying outside my window, web invisible, and it struck me as a powerful metaphor for my past couple of years. As my belief in Synchronicity has grown, so has my need to Stop and Be. A spider does what it can to create the circumstances for provision, and then just sits and waits. I could unpack this more, but I suspect it may apply differently to everyone so I'm leaving it there.

And then I read a little of Shirley Maclaine's book 'Sage-ing with Age-ing'. I love this sentence from near the beginning: "I realize that ageing well isn't about the search for happiness, but more about quietly feeling content with what I've experienced." This is so true for me that I felt like applauding. I've just had a week away with my elder daughter, and one of the recurring themes of our conversations was about how I feel the need to differentiate between things I could revisit (eg Education) and things I'd love to do again but which aren't 'Life stage appropriate' - meaning, I'm no longer a teenager! I still yearn to do lots of things in life, but I recognise that some of them would be simply about pretending I'm not an older person. (Some are still eminently doable, however, and I intend to do them until I'm 90+ such
as the terrifying speedboat ride we went on!)

So Maclaine's words chimed with me. I seek the contentment of which St Paul spoke, I suppose. And increasingly I feel it. This doesn't mean, though, that I don't still crave adventure, because I do, and I intend to have it!

This morning my daughter and I were talking about life purpose. I increasingly suspect that we have got this all wrong. When I was a practising Christian there was a lot of talk around about 'our Extravagant God'. Well I do still believe in that God. (Not perhaps in the Church's version.) And I am therefore led to the logical (to me) conclusion that my life might just as well be about the minutiae as the Grand Scheme. Perhaps my life's purpose was fulfilled the day I spent with an elderly woman grieving her husband's death? Perhaps everything else has been incidental? Or has my life been about the biscuits I baked for the School Summer Fair... or the heart-shaped pancakes I made for a Valentine's Disco... or the woman I smiled at on the bus, or the child whose eye I caught as she was being told off... I'm sure you get my point.

We assume that our whole life has to have meaning, but if it's true that there is an inherent extravagance to Creation, then perhaps this 'making peace' with one's life, the Being Content, is about recognising that Being is more than enough. Everything else is a bonus. What do you think?