Jane Fonda Asked Me a Question

I recently listened to an episode of Glennon Doyle’s podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” that featured an interview with Jane Fonda. Fonda is a remarkable 85 years old. She covered a lot of ground in the hour-long session, but one topic in particular pulled at me. She talked about how, at her age, she thinks a lot about how she wants to die. Selecting how we die  – who is by our side, where we are, what our last meal and words are – these things are gifts, and gifts granted to hardly anyone. But, dying by design – in the arms of our family, with friends close, in the presence of all our favorite smells and keepsakes, and in the place that means the most to us; I know that this is only possible by knowing how we want to live.

I’ve been pondering life and death more lately than ever before. I think part of it is being 52. I think part of it is that over the past months, so many people in my extended community have passed away. Parents of friends; people who went to my high school leaving us all too young; older relatives whose time had just come. Learning of each new passing turned me toward the question that Jane had put into my head weeks before…how do I want to live so that I can imagine how I want to die?

I Want to Use My Love to Love

This statement sounds odd, but I think so many of us think we are loving people when we’re not. We’re really trying to change them or control them, all covered in the cloak of “love.” I have done this many times in my life, and it’s been done to me even more. This “love” never lasts. Lasting love is free. It holds you while giving us endless room to grow, moving us about inside of it, and evolving us into the best versions of ourselves, like flowers always turning toward the sun. Love isn’t a clenched fist fixed on the arms of our children, our partners, or our friends. Love lets us go with no strings.

I Want to Find My Freedom

We all live our lives in prisons of our own making. Chained to our past, our addictions, our fears; anything that takes us outside of ourselves and into a place of anxious worry.  I want to always ask the question, “does this make me free?” and if the answer is no, I want to wish it goodbye and live for today with hands open.

I Want to Parent Myself

Even with the best of families, no one has the perfect childhood. There are parts of our lives we all want to rewrite. By taking the time to parent ourselves, we can do that work for ourselves and for our children. We won’t completely recreate our stories, but we can forge a different ending, where the previous chapters don’t point to one unchangeable outcome. How do I try to parent myself? By the same way I parent my kids – ensuring they sleep enough, eat well, feel loved, and know they are safe. I want to make myself feel safe.

I Want to Use My Gifts

We all have unique gifts. We hear this message from the internet, our friends, our therapists…the list goes on. But what does this actually mean? It means we have to do the work to uncover what those gifts are. Often, the ones we’re told we possess as children aren’t actually the gifts we’re meant to give the world. In fact, many of my traits that I was discouraged to share as a child have shown up today as my real gifts. I don’t think our gifts always come easy. I don’t think they are always intuitive. I think our truest gifts are hard to uncover and often born out of what has hurt us the most. I want to dig my gifts out from the dirt and put them to worthy use.

I Want to Know – in the Deepest Part of Me – That There is Only One Life

This doesn’t mean it has to be grand or loud every day. I think life’s most beautiful moments are often quiet, singular, and overlooked by many who are moving too fast to notice. How much of my own life have I been oblivious to, focused on tomorrow or yesterday or things that utterly don’t matter? Now, each day, I want to begin with the knowledge that wonder and love and mystery are all around me, only if I have the curiosity of spirit to see it. One life, one chance, one day at a time. More of my years are behind me than ahead of me, and I want to make the ones in front of me count the most.

Maybe this is a what a midlife crisis is – realizing how many of your days have been spent on foolishness. But instead of buying a sports car or running away, I am thankful that my 52 years of living brought me to this moment and these realizations. How I’m going to live will dictate how I die – hopeful, paying attention, loving those I love into freedom, with room for all of it and more.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver