Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. And so do our lives.

When we are young we don’t typically think about our own demise. For when we are young, we feel immortal. We don’t think about the trajectory of our lives in totality. We may realize that yeah, someday we’re gonna die, but may only entertain that concept as a passing thought, rather than exploring it, or coming to terms with it in depth.

The first time other than the notion of an ego death that I came to terms with my own mortality was when I became a father. Becoming a father brought me back down to earth so to speak from the ephemeral to the urgency of now. It also made me feel like a part of history, and gave me a visceral experience of a connection to the past as well as the future, and how I was now a part of that chain, in the sense of my own place in my familial history.

One of those realizations was that I was now firmly on the wheel of birth and death. First I was a child, a young adult, and now a grown adult with children. How would that impact my life going forward? What kind of parent I would become, and what legacy I would leave my children in my own personal history? My children are now grown, and I have moved up a cog in the wheel of birth and death, emerging as a senior citizen. And in this unfolding, I have asked myself what kind of Elder I want to become.

I recall listening to Alan Watts speaking to parents of children who were experimenting with psychotropic substances to learn about themselves on their own journey to seek the truth of who they are. What stuck me was his notion that in the first half of our lives we are building an identity and in the process of becoming; and in the second part of our lives having become that, is to be about letting go of who we think we are, and giving up our attachment to things and ideas perhaps that we have accumulated, giving us a sense of self. In a very real sense, this is a meditation of coming to terms with death, and preparing for our own death.

This idea is touched upon in the documentary film of the life of Richard Alpert, becoming Baba Ram Das, and entitled: Becoming Nobody. The first step for him was to return to being Richard Alpert, essentially going back to his roots impacting his trajectory in becoming Ram Das. I have yet to see the film, but understand the concept that in becoming nobody, we become everybody; more fully in touch with what it is to be human, developing empathy for others and especially for ourselves. By necessity this leads us back to our own story.

In my book, Every Now and Zen …on the Nature of Being and Becoming, the last chapter is about completion. In this section are some exercises I found invaluable in that they literally changed my own life, giving me two tools to give me traction in reconciling my past and moving forward into a future I could imagine.

These exercises are in the form of two lists I experienced some 45 years ago in my Death and Dying course.

The First List:

As if you were on your deathbed, make a list of all of the regrets in your life.

(Realize that you are still alive, and now have the opportunity to make amends for your behavior, words, decisions or actions you regret, and may now communicate truthfully to address all of your concerns. And, when you have, you will find that you are now able to fully express the love and appreciation you feel to those around you while they are still alive, reconciling and liberating yourself from the past, becoming present and humanly authentic.)

The Second List:

As if you were born again this moment, make a list of all the things you would like to do in this life.

(Realize that you are alive right here and now, presenting you with an opportunity. The opportunity of a lifetime… To live the life you always wanted, and to fully express who you are and who you want to become from this Now on.)

A final exercise that also helped me to gain traction as a young adult in my own life at that time I invite you to employ; is to list your short term and long term goals for your life going forward with the caveat of course, that everything is subject to change at any moment.

I have a memory of an experience in my 20’s before fatherhood, of what I would characterize as an eternal moment of now; that I have always been here in this moment, ageless throughout time. As I have since crossed the threshold of my youth on the aging spectrum, I can report with 100% certainty that there is in fact, a beginning, a middle, and an ending in the experience of our lives.

When you think of your life as a story you are writing about yourself as the author of who you are, and who you want to become, what we are to contend with by-in-large is the middle; of which you only get one. So make it count!