I'm on a trip with my brothers, and my parents this week. After our parents go to bed, we move to another cottage and soak up time with each other one way or another. Last night we started answering questions like "what do you think about these days?" and "what is something you feel really good about?"
The glimpse of each other, while not wholly surprising, is still sweet. It seems to point to an emotional and intellectual growth spurt of sorts as we move past the mid-point of middle age. Looking back, for maybe all of us, there was a period of time when we were so engrossed in raising children, making a buck, trying to manage our relationships, that intentional retrospection and internal change seemed a thing relegated to our younger days of sitting upstairs in the farmhouse, where we discussed and resolved so many things, dreamed and planned for our futures.
Life seems instead to be made up of cycles, and we are reborn again into the same yet different persons as we move through these years. Each of my brothers has moved as into a different room, with new light, new perspectives and colors.
It's a lot like some of the treasures I am seeing on the beach-battle worn, with pieces broken off, but burnished by time and the constant pounding of the waves into a thing of beauty. My brothers - whose opinion of me matters, and who are my measure of what it is to live a life of intent and meaning.
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