Maybe it was turning 40 last year or a period of expanding awareness that encouraged me (us) to step off into the unknown.  Looking over the past decade, while filled with events and changes, I felt as I had slept through several years on automatic pilot.  Much of my life was filled with only semi-conscious hours and it was moving quickly.  Life had developed a predictable rhythm; it was comfortable and easy to keep in synch.  I had routines to fill the hours and the same thoughts filling passing days.

There is no escaping it, 40 is middle age.  Though I still feel young, approximately half the time I have been given has been used up.  Dreams have come and gone, success and failures too, none of it quite working out like I had thought it might.  Even the moments of great ego satisfaction were so transient they did little to erase the feeling I was missing something, a subtle underlying discontentedness. I felt like a passive observer, instead of an active participant.  The culmination of feelings resulted in my ability to listen and trust that we (I) get what we need, not always what we want.  I took my fingers off the microphone and listened to the receiver.

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