What would you do if you had the guts to do it?
That was the question I read a couple of days ago. It gave me a pause that tickled my brain. If I had been asked that question when I was younger, I could have easily come up with a list of exciting ideas.
Come to think of it, I even followed through on a few of them, like taking up skiing when I was 40, rafting quite a few wild rivers, doing a 20-mile day hike with a physically-fit boyfriend when I was 50. I survived – both the hike and the boyfriend. I even skydived on my 70th birthday and got a tattoo on my 75th.
But when I think about guts these days, as an 82-year-old whose body, if not mind, is winding down, it has nothing to do with physical accomplishments.
My guts these days tell me only to live each day to the fullest in whatever way I can.
Poet and novelist May Sarton talked about this idea of planning a day when one doesn’t have a job or commitments. It’s not easy, she wrote, in Journal of a Solitude.
I agree.
So it is that I start each day with coffee, my journal, and my to-do list, beginning it with the top priority for the day — which can be anything from write a book review to clean the toilet — followed by things I simply want to do. The guts come in when it gets down to the doing.
Some days I succeed – and some days I don’t.
Today I succeeded. The first thing on my list was post a blog.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Pat Bean's blog 