whackadoodle perceptions of the older mind

Over the past few years - after hitting 60, especially over the past year - am often taken aback by my mind's increased ability to leap about through & within time & perceptions.  Maybe this is peculiar to my experience, but my guess is that it is common as we inch upward, especially as we ease out of "middle age," when the mind tends to be more ego-bound than at other epochs. 

Maybe it's the result of accumulated experience which helps us see all the times we got our knickers in twist over what turned out to be no big deal, see all the times we held back from doing something we came to regret, see all the times we were harshly judgemental only to discover that things were not at all what we assumed, see all the times we could have said something encouraging empowering emboldening (especially to ourselves) & stayed silent.

Early last night, driving with John a bit of a ways to hear a performance at a coffee shop (both the singer & the coffee shop being dear to us), so many thoughts about my mother & sister surged through my heart & mind - it felt like moments in time were actually with us, in the car, brightly colored ribbons dancing all around us. 

As I spoke, anguished, to John, images of them as children & youth, young adults & older, flashed back & forth.  I re-experienced what I'd felt over the confusing decades, yet never forgetting that they - like my sister & mother - were a bundle of perceptions, not actual reality, my compassion for their pain far greater than my heartbreak over ancient hurts.

As we drove over Bristol up Hatboro over Temperance up Spencer over Sackettsford & Rushland to Swamp to Edison-Furlong to Pebble Hill & into the heart of Doylestown, my mind was all whackadoodle with flipping through snatches of time & anguish, of hurt & empathy, of old wounds & blessed healing.

Gosh, but I do like having more years under my belt.  Life doesn't make the sense I craved over years past, but that, in itself, makes sense.

As I said - whackadoodle.