I Am

I turned 49 recently.

I am one year from 50 and I am excited in ways I was not when I turned 39 or 40.

Partly because my goal of living to be 50 and beyond is in reach. Who gets excited about that? This guy. (And that is a topic for another day.)

When I started writing this, my sense of things was that I was clueless in my 20s, I wasted much of my 30s, struggled for half of my 40s, and I’m just hitting my stride now. And yes, that is true; call me a late bloomer and all that, because man, if I can hit for average for life expectancy, this third act is gonna be amazing.

Yet even as I write this now, I am transforming, because while I celebrate these feelings in myself, it also dawns on me that there is a slight flaw in my framing — it is either past or future. It is not now.

Now.

Now.

And so, now, I ask myself, how do I feel, and what do I want to be, to do —- now?

What is the “I am” and not the “I was/did” or the “I will”?

It is this:

I am letting go of the sense of lost time — and it’s very very hard.

I am letting go of regret.

I am accepting perfect imperfection.

I am enjoying joy.

I am taking hold of living purposefully.

I am taking hold of living in the moment.

I am taking hold of embracing myself without compromise.

I am playing with lovely failures.

I am letting go of fear of my past.

I am feeling my pain and letting my tears be its ointment.

I am taking hold of love and grace and peace, fully and honestly.

I am becoming my own Superman.

I am forgiving and I am forgiveness and I am forgiven.

I am loving love.

I am at peace with peace.

I am 49.

I am son, husband, father, brother, nephew, cousin, friend.

I am already enough.

I am not done.

I am all that I am.