“Now he walks in quiet solitude the forest and the streams
Seeking grace in every step he takes
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake” – Rocky Mountain High, John Denver

This is a morning for reflection …. As well it should since that is what many do on days celebrating their birth.  As I sit here resting on the far side of 6 decades and nearing the entry into the seventh, I “feel”, allowing my emotions to create and deliver feelings that spark my soul.  I harvest these feelings … using them as my thermometer measuring my life.

Coffee is sipped and music plays, pulling deeply from the repository of emotional archives embedded deep within me.  A library created over those decades lived from events encountered along my journey into this moment.  I pull these emotions forward …. draw from them the elements marking times past as feelings recreating fragments of events and past moments … swirl them with the moments within the “now” … and ask myself “How is my life?” … “How would I measure and mark My Time?”

A wonderful answer surfaces.  One felt strongly from a place firmly embedded within my foundation and core.  An answer worthy of deep recognition since it serves me well as a re-boot for my tomorrows and movement into my remaining decades.  The answer revealed through the “feelings” is a resounding “Life has never been better!”  The answer shouted from within affirms that these days … this time … My Time … is colored in joyful ways never anticipated, and harmonized with my world such that I simply wish the music to play on and on without end.

And I know that to reach a place such as where I stand now … to experience My Time as it surrounds me now, I had to travel through all my previous time.  That without the journey I traveled, I would have not reached the hilltop I now stand upon looking backward and towards the future.  That without the past joys and pain I would not have developed the strength nor the sense of direction that led me to stand in the crisp, clear breeze of this moment … My Time.

And while I stand in My Time, bathing in deep, rich feelings of joy, I also realize that time, life, and all that surrounds them is a gift, given and taken without certainty.  Given the time passed under my feet as I walked a life, this awareness is even more meaningful and when sensed and understood encourages me to throw open the doors of my life so that I continue to step in new, uncharted, and exciting directions at every opportunity.  To use my “feelings” thermometer to signal actions worthy to be taken to build My Time into something even grander.  Within me is a new sense of adventure carried by an energized explorer.  An explorer ready to engage vigorously in living life fully and completely, taking his newly formed sense of inner well-being as a wave to ride toward the horizon.  The horizon of a life now being lived from a new, mature, wiser, and more energized platform.

It is truly “My Time” … the best of times … the time to live and experience all that each moment can offer.  Yes, it is a birthday … a new day to live life as the unbridled adventure it’s meant to be.  And it is My Time to live it …