A New Story is Always Ready to Be Written

From William Alexander:

What's your new story? In the darkness, where we've put the discarded parts of our selves- not the least being the guardian angel, assumed to be a self-indulgent phantom... left over from the magical thinking of childhood. I believe that as elders, if we are fortunate and do the work, that very mind of the forgotten child, ever present, awaits just beneath consciousness.

--William Alexander, Hi, I'm Bill and I'm Old. Hazelden, 2008.

But the new story? It is not rootless- or it shouldn't be. It is clearly based on something- that magical thinking of childhood. When one takes time as age makes time shorter, we will discover what we have always known- about ourselves and our world and never have been able to see. We discover serendipities and synchronicities. We discover the stories, shaped by The Story, that prodded us forward without knowing.

We may even discover our guardian angel that has been hovering just out of sight. We will hear the movement of the air that allows us to move forward.

Back to Alexander:

Now that I am old, the walls have fallen away and the masks have turned to dust. What's left, if I am lucky, is my true character and my true calling revealed.

--William Alexander, Hi, I'm Bill and I'm Old. Hazelden, 2008.

In the end the new story always ready to be written is the one we have been working on since we knew how to move in the direction life calls us. It is always new for what we have done cannot be changed. All we have to write in is today. Not a bad place to be.