Tides of Aging and Renewal
It took me two decades to experience time as a liquid. In childhood, clock ticks felt as rigid as granite. Calendar pages felt as heartlessly hard as a brick wall. Time seemed an army of moments, coming to conquer all with its relentless linear march.
As I grew into the seasons, time began to soften and arc. I sensed that time was better measured by circles of return. My watch’s second hand always returned to where it began. The earth circled the sun, annually returning to its previous place. The grasses and flowers also knew how to return every year. All lives were expressed in cycles of aging and renewal, within a transcendent context in which life itself never died at all. This softened the landscape of moments for me, turning them from conquering soldiers to family members.
Finally, my explorations of physics and nature began to reveal the true liquidity of time. College studies of quantum physics and special relativity hinted at time’s fluid nature, changing subtly with light speed and waves of gravity. My quiet experiences in nature revealed the close relationship of rivers and my own veins. I melted slowly, becoming able to flow through even jagged urban landscapes. The underlying liquidity of time and life became comforting. It became part of my identity.
It was useful and enlightening to see myself as a river; to meditate on what water would do, given obstacles at hand. It still is. Yet that liquid feeling still felt incomplete. When my meditations only focused on downhill flow, my life seemed to only be one transient journey to the sea.
This week, as I reach my 65th birthday, time has melted my heart more. On the shore of the infinite ocean is where my feet feel most comfortable with the liquidity of time and being. With my aging toes in the wash of the tides, I feel renewal more than transience. I look at a remembrance drawn upon the sand for a departed soul, itself integrating with the tide. In its merger with the sea, I see that nothing has disappeared at all. I see that none of us ever will.
Becoming integrated with the infinite ocean is not the same as leaving the earth. It’s a form of release, but not true disappearance. It’s a rearrangement of soul, and our place within it. If we’ve lived well and given fully, our work will continue to serve the seasons, even if we’re no longer evident to the next who stand on the sand. I think of my mother, whose art, conservation work, and kindness still ripple through the world in liquid, loving ways. Her ashes will soon feed the meadow and forest. They’ll continue the cycles, as the rains from the ocean return.
I plan for my own eventual liquid integration, even as I make solid plans for tomorrow. Though other friends my age speak of feeling old, I don’t feel the same. I only celebrate the liquid cycles, infinite and pure, of which all of us are forever a part. I celebrate rather than rue the passage of time, as I melt into the tides of aging and renewal.