No one likes to try; that is a given. Maybe that is because the opposites are all we know. We can say “I can do it,” or “I can’t do it.” Trying belongs to some weird realm altogether. Thank God for getting older. You can say “No, that is not for me.” I learned that from my shaman friend.

People then tell you about the “No pain, no gain” principle. Again, I say as I grow older. “No, that is not for me.” And I listen to my essence, which always knows the truth, and it feels in 100 per cent agreement with this. Perhaps trying is another form of conformity that one simply outgrows.

The freedom of aging is that you can move more directly from your innate sense of what you like and don’t like.

I know that sleep is hard to come by for me. I now sleep in fits and starts. When I wake up, it takes me a while to feel like myself. I relish the first hours of the day when I have nothing to do but be. I don’t try to make early appointments any more. I make them for late morning or afternoon.

There comes a time when you quit trying to accommodate the world and voila! You discover your own right to be yourself. You used to have places to go and things to see. Now you are allowed to traverse your inner landscape, which is suddenly quite empty. Ah, essence has always known just how the world works and it has none of it. Jesus said his kingdom was not here. Then it is clearly elsewhere. And that is where these essays come from!

Vicki Woodyard