This season of my life, with my beloved dad just passed away on 6 July 2022 early morning 12:54 am, and with more hands-on working on house chores from A to Z (as the maid is off for visiting her family in Indonesia), I have no choice but to start thinking of what if, what's next, how to for the current and next phase of my life.
I think I am ready to admit I am entering into my final third phase of my life, half-time is no longer appropraite to describe my current journey, the moving from success to significance (although not quite achieved yet) also not quite the word to describe my life now. I have to start thinking for myself, to imagine, to picture, to craft, to direct my next phase of my life as my own boss ! Think about it, being my own boss, YES! Is this not what I really want all these while ? A kind of freedom to be able to say :
- Yes, I will continue!
- Yes, I will take this new challenge up!
- No, I will choose not to continue and I have enough!
- No, I will pursure the path that I really want!
I thought I should be able to do this now ! Or so I thought.
Its liberating to be able to think like this and take actions accordingly but its also a bit challenging to form things into shape and to start to take actions towards the new goals. So what is mindful living from now on for me ?
It is to recognise that life is shorter than we know it, it is mostly quite generous length of 75 years or 80 years, but the way we live it especially the first and second phases of our life, we spend our life as if we are immortal but the truth is, we are not immortal. We all will die one day! I figure to be able to plan for the dying and leaving should start early, some say at 65 years old, which I think its too late. I would say at the first former retirement age of 55 years, then we should know we are into the last third phase of our life and we should incorporate mindful living into our lifestyle and start to behave like one who will leave this earth one day!
Here are a few things that came to mind as I think and plan for mindful living which I hope will keep me focus :-
1) Take more time-out to have the me-time and do self-care more, be it the face, the hair, the eye brows, the body massage, spa. Not to forget the exercises one to take up regularly. Purging, silent retreat, solo-journey, detox retreat and camp, go for it!
2) Read the Word of God deeper, take up opportunity to teach the younger christians, the youths, the children, go fo it! It will force us to research and revise our understanding of the Word and dive deeper as we prepare to teach.
3) Create more home-made bombastic meals experience memories, the YouTube, the internet has millions of videos on how to cook just-about-anything on planet earth! So, there is no excuse! Vegan, Vegetarian, Calories-dense meals, Keto, etc ! At this age, we should aim for wholesome food, whole food cooked from scratch and not the processed food. I have this temptations to buy processed food like ham, vegetarian meats but really, we can make whole food at home if we plan for it!
4) Declutter and downsize the wardrobe, over the years, from pre-marraige, pre-childbearing, we would have accumulated many wonderful dresses, blouses, skirts, but we probably fall into the "rule of 80-20", we only wear 20% of what we have, the rest of 80% are just occupying space, very nice memories or wanna-be dresses but never fit! It is time to let go, if they are sentimental values, probably organise who to give away to or just sell them for charity.
5) Do a Swedish Death Cleaning, this sounds upsettingly bad but it is trending now, very popular process, its different from Marie Kondo's decluttering method. SDC focuses on keeping and giving away things that your loved ones will want when you die. MK focuses on keeping what's spark joy in your life. This process is a mindful living as it will take years to complete but it is good to plan to begin it as soon as you are ready. For a person who does not declutter, this presents a burdensome challenge but still, it has to be done.
6) Create more memoreis with people you care about, this requires a bit of budget as often, we like to take people out for stylish, instagramable cafes and fancy restaurants ! There are people who we take for granted (if we sit down and think), that we never have time or bother to have time with but they are our relatives and friends, close ones, loved ones, but the issue is we do not have time to sit all day to have coffee and meals, besides it spoils the diet plans. Well, its the final-third of your life, I would think to have social media filled with heart-warming reunions, gatherings of friends and loved ones, the small talks, the serious talks during the gatherings are all priceless and worth the money "invested"! It does spark joy !
7) Find a way to organise all the digital photographs taken which never printed and only on our phones for ourselves to see and few of them were ever posted in any way! Upload to some cloud-based social media (people will thank you for it, do set some private groups so that not all of your friends see your every photos!). For the important ones, make effort to print that so that the loved ones get to see them in the future.
8) Plan the trips, the journeys, with people you enjoy travelling with. Even work trips, make them fun, incorporate vistis to local tourism, local tamu, local cultural locations and enjoy what the area brings to us !
9) Take an inventory of your finances and think investments, insurances, loan and liabilities, investments and record them down, put them into a physical file and also an online folder. With more financial freedom, it is perhaps the right time to begin some investments jointly with our children to help them to plan ahead when they are still students or having low income.
10) Think and plan out "Health is Wealth" as the tagline for living. I watched an interesting video about the aim of healthy living is to live a long healthy life and should we be very sick, to die without much suffering. This provides an idea how we should prioritise how to live our every moments.
~ Penned by a 56 years old and subject to future editing and revisions.
The following photos nothing to do with mindful living but taken from my camera phones on the day I wrote the above. Just a reminder to be mindful of the beauty surrounding us, need us to recognise them.
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