Birthday Letters

Everything we experience, all that we live through, make, say and do. Will eventually reach a place where it has to change its course, change its nature, adjust its rate of exchange. These threshold moments are places of transition, places of redress and reckoning.

“It’s a game of two halves” the old sporting adage goes. As I myself step into the second movement of my life, I’m sitting writing this overlooking an ancient landscape. One that’s grown and matured across a deeper cycle of seasons, at a scale that is seemingly unfathomable to me  and way beyond my present tense. Yet its flux and mutability are drawn from the same force and motivation that equally governs my own heartbeat , my own  breath,  I can feel it unfolding from the same generative source, the same long now.

So from this vantage point, the second half of anything, be it a life, a journey, a relationship, a society or song presents a possibility for a continued ripening. Of wisdom, mastery, intimacy and trust. A way of revealing our full authenticity. And the reassuring message, That we are never going to have a greater power to discern and choose. Never have more lessons from our history from which to learn. Never possess more emotional resilience, more insight into what really works for us and what does not. Or a deeper, sometimes more desperate conviction of the importance of claiming our voice back, finding the courage to restore our own personal sovereignty, so we can hoist a crucial bridge to the second half of life. And live it in our way. Which is the only way. That is our obligation. To embrace it with more generosity,  honesty and wear it into the world with a profound sense of adventure. 

Quiraing Isle of Skye