“Though I am with autumn, my ears still echo the songs of spring.
But my sadness has turned into awe, and I stand in the presence of life and life’s daily miracles.”
—Kahlil Gibran
The beautiful thing about poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran’s long poem Youth and Age is that it’s full of gorgeous nuggets like this, thoughtful reflection on getting older.
The hilarious thing is that Gibran wrote it when he was in his early forties…
This week’s podcast interview guest is a gold mine of thoughtful reflection and hilarity: Ian Brown. Nearly 50 years as a journalist—28 of those as a Globe and Mail newspaper columnist—have honed Brown’s eye for detail and reportage, which he has recently turned on his own aging and all the unknowns baked into human mortality.
After the extraordinary, international success of his book The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, Brown wrote a memoir entitled Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning? A Diary of My Sixty-First Year which also heralded critical acclaim.
Ten years later, my conversation finds him finishing up his next book entitled—you guessed it—Seventy.
I hope you enjoy this chat. It certainly left me with the encouraging sense that getting older is, in fact, getting better.
This week’s Unknown:
Walking to an appointment in my neighbourhood last week, I veered spontaneously into a back alley.
Nothing to see here. Or is there?
There’s nothing special about the alley, per se, except for this: I had never walked down it before. Ever. In my entire time on this earth, indeed in this neighbourhood, I had never before set foot along that little strip. I must have seen it, it isn’t new. Yet I had never before chosen it as a path, instead of the main thoroughfare that runs parallel a block away. In the dozens of times I had walked this route before—always fairly hurried to get to my appointment on time—I had established the most efficient way from A to B and shifted into automatic pilot to get through it.
But this time I covered new ground. It’s surprising what kind of stimuli there is in a single, short block of urban alleyway when every inch of it is terra incognita. In her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit references the Greek philosopher Meno who said,
“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”
Maybe by making a practice of wandering into unknowns.
This week’s Love Affair:
I just finished reading Canadian author Claire Cameron’s new memoir and I highly recommend. I found it smart, beautiful and fabulous. Facing fears, navigating uncertainties, reckoning with all we cannot know and control… mmm, mm such good stuff. (Note to self—er, Carla: book her for an interview on the podcast!)
You can learn more about the creative influences that helped Claire craft such a compelling, original memoir here.
Onward—something to consider
Put new ground under your feet this week. Even if it’s just a short deviation on your regular commute or daily walk, tread some unknown turf. See what kind of fresh energy the unfamiliarity brings. If you give it a try, I’d love to hear about it!
As always, thank you for reading, and for listening.
Gill
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