Tuesday, September 16, 2025 at 5:11 AM

   The above is a line from William Wordsworth’s poem called “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”. In this lyrical and pastoral poem, he reflected on his childhood, his innocence, the beauty of nature, and the awe of a beautiful summer’s day. It is one of those poems that brings out the tenderness in one’s heart. It pierces that shield of indifference that protects us from the reality of daily life, in my opinion. He wrote this poem in his later years while he was grappling with the effects of the Industrial Revolution, when life was uneven and uncertain and unpredictable. By the way, this is my personal take on the poem, something I’ve felt since first reading it in high school.

   224 years after this poem was written, we are still grappling with this changing world, changing by the minute, and not by the months or years he experienced during the Victorian Period. This overwhelming rush of newness and information and discovery does not give us a chance to catch our breath, to catch up with the world moving at such an accelerated pace.

   I’m writing this for people over 60, but I suppose that no matter your age, you feel like you are on that bullet train hurtling towards infinity, into the unknown. For most of us Baby Boomers, I believe, we are grateful for the lives we’ve lived, the experiences, the joys and the sorrows, the gains and the losses, and we marvel at how much this planet has changed.

   I believe that we enjoy nature more, that we are comfortable being alone, even if sometimes that loneliness can be too much to bear. We become more deliberative and less spontaneous. And sometimes, even when one is surrounded by friends and family, that loneliness still seeps through, into our consciousness. But we feel more anchored and secure in ourselves. I know that I’m generalizing, that some of us are burdened with health issues, and that fear of being on our own at the end. But if we are healthy and comfortable, it is also the best chapter of our lives; I really believe that.

   The thing about life is that it is so fleeting, and we don’t realize it until we reach that age when our mortality is threatened. My friend Dave and I talk about our younger selves at least once a week, and we always end up wondering where did the time go? When did we become our parents and beyond that? Where vanity and jealousy and lust aren’t important anymore. A time when we worry more about the weather or prescriptions than we do about parties and functions—not that we give up on them, but the urgency isn’t there anymore. We prefer to travel or try out some new restaurant or the theater, simple things.

   It is our Golden Age. It is our time to slow down and take in all the beauty that surrounds us:  our family, friends, and nature’s beauty that never fails to soothe the troubled mind. It is a time for reflection, meditation, for trying to make amends for a selfish past, in some instances. Time to let the people in your life know how grateful you are to them for making life more bearable, more beautiful.

   It is especially a time to accept who you are, to love and cherish and take care of one’s self. To remember and appreciate and be thankful that you have lived a long, tumultuous, beautiful life, with detours along the way, hazards which, hopefully, one can overcome. To appreciate all that we have seen and felt, life experiences that cannot be bought, but must be lived. Wat a ting!

   “Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in grass, of glory in flower;

We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In the years that bring the philosophic mind.” — William Wordsworth

Glen