Stillness at Forty-Nine
Aging, Silence and Spiritual Rebirth
A favorite spot on the cliffs - philosophy on the wall.
It’s my birthday (December 19). I am forty-nine years old—again. Despite all the personal and spiritual evolution I’ve lived through, I still surrender to the quiet illusion that aging gracefully is an oxymoron. I joke with friends that I’m going there, even as I resist it every step of the way. There’s a reason for this resistance. I feel an undeniable vitality still moving through me—so much life left to live, so much to give, to touch, to see, to smell, to experience, and to share.
But something is different now. My connection to life once moved from the outside in, my attention shaped—sometimes hijacked—by what others needed. Lately, I have become more selfish, though it feels truer to say more centered. The other day, as a client struggled to stand in her power, I heard myself say, “Become the center of your universe.” What I now whisper to myself is this: I am the universe. There are no boundaries but the ones I place on myself. Life has been a difficult teacher, but a faithful one. It has taught me that the key to knowing myself lives in the space within me—the space where I hold my silence.
This time of year always leaves me in that stillness. Those days when I have the opportunity to pause, reflect, and engage in this dialogue with myself are a gift. There is nothing in that stillness, and yet it is full and alive and deep, not a surface quiet or emptiness as it is when there is an absence of noise. This is a stillness that allows me to hear my breath and my heartbeat and to listen and dance to the music of the universe. This silence reminds me of my true origin; it calls me to remember. From there, the longing to return emerges. From that nothingness, something, no, someone, is born over and over again.
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
Did you know that darkness is in light and light is in darkness? I used to believe that to be happy was to live in the bright sunshine, and that entering the darkness must certainly be death. Nothing is All. There is always more, whether it’s seen or not. Like the rays that escape the cloud cover today, playing hide-and-seek with the gentle waves of the ocean, there is something I do not see yet that is waiting to be acknowledged, remembered, and recognized. I must remember that as I continue on my journey. Those days that are filled with despair will turn to joy at some point, just as those days that hold joy may then turn to sorrow. There are ebbs and flows keeping time with a universal movement that reveals its cadence only to those who are ready to listen to the music.
This weekend also brings the winter solstice, a threshold when the darkness invites in the light. This dark stillness of winter has been for me a time of reflection. I would say that this past year has been a rebirth process, with my soul being nurtured in a universal womb, dark, loving, and warm. There has been a “forced” release of pieces of my identity. To be honest, it has not been comfortable. But I recognize this process, and my life has shown me that there is always something, an amplification, on the other side.
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
There is no haste in this emergence. The darkness of this womb now invites in the light, showing me that it is time to connect with that divine light and be reborn into an expanded expression of my essential nature. I will arrive naked as newborns do. No hiding allowed. As I begin a new year of life, I will hold the darkness and the light as a spectrum of my own consciousness. I know there will be times when I may break my silence, and I also know that this silence will never leave me. It will be there just behind what is seen, beckoning to me to remember who I am constantly becoming, while the music of the universe plays for those who are ready to listen.
If any of this resonates, it may be because you, too, are standing in a season of quiet reckoning—feeling the tension between who you have been and who you are becoming.
Perhaps you are learning, as I am, that growth does not always announce itself with clarity or momentum. Sometimes it arrives as fatigue, as longing, as the ache to slow down and listen more closely. This way of seeing invites a different posture toward your own life: one rooted in patience, self-trust, and reverence for the unseen work happening beneath the surface.
You are not behind. You are not broken. You may simply be in the dark that precedes illumination.
