Ygrec, if you will accept a word from me?

when I was in my 20s I heard someone say that her real life had not started yet. I thought, gee, that's me too.
I remembered it in my 30s. And in my 40s. When my 50s arrived, it occurred to me that my real life had started long ago, but still it was seven more years till I got into therapy and began to understand what really was. I would not trade these last three years of enlightenment for anything I can think of.

If "the unexamined life is not worth living", how very much worth living is the examined life Ygrec - and you have that great accomplishment to your credit. You are so rich compared to the poor ones who go in circles still, saying that their real life hasn't started yet.

One thing that I find reduces the sense of time lost, is to do what you can, with the people put before you in your daily life, to bring light to those still going in circles. It is a beautiful thing to see how the human mind can be awakened by a chance remark, a small kindness, a steadfast example. It is within reach every day. and ten to fifteen years of those kinds of gift-giving, day by day - well that's a blessed thought in the darker hours. Not pride - just relief and gratitude to be allowed to try.

I read once that when we die, we just gather together the tangled skeins of our lives, sort of ball them up, and hand them over, saying, well, here - this is as far as I can get. It's like that for all of us I am convinced, the saint as well as the sinner, the great and the ordinary. And you know what? it's okay. this is for you