Friday, July 12, 2013

Ageless Tai Chi


As most of my friends know, I recently attended my annual week-long tai chi workshop. It's a great experience and I highly recommend it for everyone. One of the interesting things about this type of workshop is the great diversity of the people attending. They come from many different places and many different backgrounds. They are young and old. Many people in their 70s are learning and practicing their tai chi. One classmate had just turned 80.

I had an interesting discussion with an acquaintance over lunch one day. She was closer to the end of her life than the beginning. OK, that's just a euphemism meaning that she was pretty old. I don't remember her exact words, but she made a comment that she didn't think she had that many more years to continue learning her tai chi.

I thought about that for a second before I responded. I told her, "I don't think I would say it that way. I would say that you have as long as everyone else. You have the rest of your life." She smiled and thanked me.

Yes, we have to plan for the future. We are all mortal, in spite of occasional wishes to the contrary. But we all have the same amount of time remaining in our lives: the rest of it. We all have the rest of our lives to follow the path that we want to walk. I don't know what could be more exciting than that.

© 2013 Eric Borreson

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