“Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.” Big Al Einstein

The first thing I have to say is today is Thursday, one day ahead of my obsessive-compulsive, Friday start of a weekly story. I am sitting here, with some time on my hands and I wondered what would happen if I just started writing. I always have a lot on my mind, but none of it feels like baggage, the kind of stuff that slows you down and parches your insides. Why I choose to share stuff is beyond me and who cares anyway?

I do think a lot about the future, whether my very, very small one or that of the unfathomably infinite, multi-dimensional, boundless-boundaries of the entire Universe. There goes an F for sentence structure and I’m sorry. Sometimes, you gotta break the rules to make a point. 

Frankly, I love the extremes, primarily because everything else lands somewhere in between these poles and you can’t get lost. Honestly, I think we all live moment to moment and our unique stories unfold on a stage that has been home to billions before. 

Oh Christ, I just thought of what I wanted to write this time. It would have been my story for tomorrow. I know it. I was going to call it Elder Speak. Wait just a second! One of the many wonderful things about feeling completely free creatively is that I can change the rules whenever I want, as long as I don’t lose you in the process. I began this story above on Thursday. The hand full of paragraphs below were written Friday evening. This specific sentence is being written on Saturday, because I wanted to try and explain flipping the notional mojo just above. Take a breath, trust me.

Now, back to Friday………………….

Let me tell why this idea came to mind in the first place. I think you get to a certain age, when you realize you are old, no matter how good you may feel. When you can honestly tell yourself you’d feel lucky to have another pretty good, ten years, you start speaking a language only understood by those breathing the same air. Actually, you don’t even have to speak, rather it’s an internal acknowledgement of amazingly, having made it to the hill top of time, helping your peers hoist the flag of experience. You hold the space for those who will come after you, waiting as long as you are able.

My response to most everything feels richer to me these days, which has nothing at all to do with being right. Maybe, the idea of honesty actually begins to coalesce over time, becoming the most important currency to quantify true, internal  wealth. It is harder and harder to lie to yourself, repeating the time worn mantras of denial and irresponsibility. Of course, this is all predicated on giving a shit about this stuff. I do.

As the world-famous host of Naked News, a monumentally popular, weekly news podcast, I begin each program with “I am a lone verse in the Universe”. It feels like I am doing something for posterity, not for today, but for all time. If I felt this way at 32, I think I’d have been certifiable. It is such a different time now. I am walking around, wearing the coat of many colors, trying not to be seen.

I think I am spending more time in my mind and anchoring myself there. I often feel like I have put a fair amount of mileage on. I am looking to stay on the road as long as I can. I want to keep enjoying the ride. These are feelings I have not had before and how could I? Sometimes, I think about all that I have done. I have been fortunate to have had a very rich past, the experiential coat of many colors, seen and felt only by its wearer.

I would have to say that my greatest joy about being out here, where I am, is to communicate to my grandson in a language he can finally understand. I confess to having occasional flashes of incarnating a terribly Semitic version of Obi-Wan Kenobi. What bridges that gap between us is love. I think we are at a place where we simply wouldn’t lie to the other. It feels like a huge responsibility to me at times, but most of the time, it brings me immutable joy. I have been patiently waiting for him to get to that place and he’s now there.

The idea that I can have that kind of relationship is like a foundation for me. It’s the third leg in the tripod of my life, engendering a kind of grounding you can only experience and never adequately explain. It was thrilling to have sons and then to embrace my sons’s son, are you fucken kidding me? 

OK, it is now officially Saturday and my job is to make sure this thing makes some sense, tying up whatever loose ends I have already tripped over before.

The Elder Speak story was going to be strictly about the impact of age and experience, the driving force, parking me where I presently find myself. Doing my yoga practice this Saturday, I thought about the idea of everyone of us having a shelf in the Library of Life. Over time, we add more and more “books” of our experiences to our oeuvre. These days, I feel myself responding to most anything, with an imperceptible pause, allowing me to rocket through the content of my experiential bibliography. 

When I wrote the piece about me and my grandson above, I changed direction yet again. Time definitely impacts our internal language, layer upon layer of experience, creating new colors on the palette of our life’s portrait. The truth is, it is both my chronology and the evolution of my relationship with my grandson that have caused me to speak in Elder Speak.

Just this morning, my young friend, Brandon, sent me this surprise photograph. The moment I saw it, the connection for me was instantaneous. I can think of a million reasons why this image tells my story, better than me. It is exactly what I am trying to talk about.

I remember being a very young boy and thinking about where i belonged in this gigantic world. I always think about it. It launched me into this story all the way at the beginning and took us here.

Hope you enjoyed the ride. I really did!