Lent Day Four: David Bowie

February 17, 2024

“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” ~ David Bowie

On this fourth day of Lent, my messenger is the extremely talented musical artist David Bowie, who died at age 69 in 2016.  These days, 69 doesn’t seem very old to me.  I wish Bowie could have lived even longer as he continued to become the person he always should have been (though I admit to having a prejudice against the word “should.”)  Wanted to be?  Hoped to be?  Was created to be?  His words remind me of a quotation by Paul Coelho that I keep taped to my desk: “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.  Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

Experts (known collectively as “they”) tell us that the first fifty years of our lives are about accumulation—accumulating money, prestige, influence, recognition, approval, power, and affirmation—and that the second half of our lives is about letting go of all those things.  I admit that I’m still rather comfortable having enough money around, but I’ve also discovered that whether I want to let go or not, prestige, influence, recognition, and affirmation will begin their own departures anyway.  It is not an easy task saying goodbye to everything that we were taught makes us worthwhile and gives us our identity.  In spiritual terms, it’s called surrender.

We can resist aging, or we can embrace it, no matter how old we are.  We can take time to search deeply within ourselves and ask what fits, and what doesn’t.  Yes, we need to prepare for financial security, but does that preparation have to define who we are?  Can we, perhaps, begin to loosen our hold on what others think about us?  Can we turn down the old records our parents or teachers played repeatedly?  Can we release whatever moralistic judgments our religions might have burdened us with in order to embrace ourselves joyfully and with compassion?  Can we break free of whatever is not us to rest in the assurance that we are, indeed, “precious, honored, and loved” by God, the Divine’s own self?  (Isaiah 43:4).

As we age, instead of thinking of ourselves as “shadows of our former selves,” we can, instead, see ourselves as “shadows of our future selves” (theologian N.T. Wright).  Maybe it takes a lifetime to become who we were created to be, but it is never too late to start.

Blessings ~ Rosemary

Photo credit: Pixabay