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Journey
into Autumn
Notes from a Seeker
By Richard Eyre
Editor's note: Two weeks ago, Richard
Eyre concluded his column on The Three Deceivers, and that column
is now being transitioned into a book that will be first-available
to Meridian readers. And speaking of Meridian readers, there are
thousands of you who have become somewhat addicted to reading Richard's
weekend column, so we are pleased to say that we have persuaded
him to keep it going. With its new name, the column will be very
different now, a sort of travelogue that will follow the journeys
of mind, body and spirit, and be a little more free-form in the
sharing of ideas and perspectives.
Hi, I'm glad to still be with you on Fridays,
and through the weekend on Meridian.
With The Three Deceivers now concluded
(and in the process of being transformed into a book that I can't
wait to get to those of you who want it) this column is going to
be more like a letter now, a weekly letter between friends. (And
when I say "between" I mean back-and-forth, because I
will always hope for and welcome your responses to richard@meridianmagazine.com.)
I'm writing today from a sweet little cottage
on the island of Tasmania in Australia. My feet are on convict-hewn
wooden floorboards in this former penal colony, and the window I'm
looking out reveals Hobart harbor. Here more than 70,000 convicts
and about the same number of farmers and settlers arrived in the
mid 1800s from England to begin colonizing this down-under land.
Tasmania is a particularly beautiful part of
Australia, with high, heavily-timbered mountains and clear rivers
and animals (like the Tasmanian devil, which you don't see anywhere
else in the world. (A cute little wallaby hops around in the gorgeous
garden beneath my window. We found this cottage through serendipity
and a Fodor's travel book that was owned by an interior decorator
immigrant from Holland named Wilmar who lives in his restored Victorian
mansion and rents the gardener’s cottage to lucky people like
us.)
We spent last week in Melbourne watching tennis.
We got to the Australian Open each morning by riding bikes down
a path by the Yarrow River. Everything is different here. The birds
toot and ping rather than chirp, and the trees have no bark or stripped
bark. Australians are remarkably friendly and accommodating, and
quite amazed by the ambitions and audacity of Americans.
We travel a lot with our speaking and writing,
and one of the things I will try to share most weeks is perspective
from new places. That is one reason for the word journey in the
title of this new column.
Linda and I are entering a new season of our
lives. The last of our nine children, Charity, just left for the
England London South Mission (the very mission where we once presided)
and so we are now, for the first time in 38 years, empty nesters.
The summer of our lives, the busy, blooming, full-house and full-spectrum
season of peak demands is now over, and we enter, as so many Meridian
readers are also entering, the autumn of our lives. There is a little
different slant of light now. Our worries and concerns are not less,
but they are different than they were, and it is clearly a time
of transition.
We think a lot lately about the seasons of our
lives, about where we are and where we have been. We want to appreciate
the past even as we head into the future, and we want to understand
how our stewardships are changing. That is one reason for the word
autumn in the title of this new column.
We are here in Australia, and headed
next for China on a speaking tour, presenting lectures on life-balance
and family-strengthening to civic and business leaders in a dozen
cities. But we are also here to write, particularly to try to finish
a book I have been working on for years called Tennis and Life
— a book that uses the game of tennis as a metaphor for life.
(Unlike other games, the score keeps starting
over in tennis, each game is like a new day, and some points are
worth vastly more than others. Tennis is the most mental of all
games, and the only one where you warm up with and depend on your
opponent. In these and many other ways, tennis is the best symbolic
case study I know for the workings and unfoldings of life.)
There are other books I am working
on too. You know about The Three Deceivers, and Linda and
I are also trying to write one on the Top Ten Parenting Ideas
over the past thirty years of working with families around the world.
We write a lot. It is our job as well as our
passion. We believe in what Benjamin Franklin once said, that everyone
should, at all times, carry two books, the one he is reading, and
the one he is writing. (Though we would have to carry quite a few
more than that, since we are always reading and writing more than
one. Books are an addiction for Linda and me, as well as a love.)
We are always writing or thinking about writing. That is one reason
for the word notes in the title of today’s column.
Writing and reading and traveling are all things
that help you to observe and to notice and to see. They are things
that broaden your perspective and that expand your awareness. They
are not the only things. Prayer is probably the most important broadener
and expander — prayer and meditation and worship and spiritual
forms of thinking.
It has been said that the difference between
men and God is awareness and perspective. He is aware of all, and
has all perspective and thus is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
If our eternal goal is to become more like God, we must pursue awareness
and perspective. If we view ourselves as stewards, if we seek synergicity
and serendipity rather than satisfaction and self-preservation,
we will find that our whole life, and all the seasons in it are
filled with adventure.
We like the new. We try to find and appreciate
uniqueness and freshness, and we value diversity. We feel blessed
to live now, at a time when the whole world is within reach, yet
within it are a thousand different worlds, each one able to teach
us a thousand things. We measure our progress by our increasing
awareness and perspective. That is one reason for the word seeker
in the title of today’s column.
I used to be in the habit of trying
to listen to Garrison Keeler on NPR on Saturdays, because I found
that his stories of "a quiet week in Lake Wobegon" expanded
my awareness and perspective. I liked spending a little of my weekend
with him. What I am hoping is that you get in the habit (or stay
in the habit if you were a regular reader of The Three Deceivers)
of spending a little of your weekends with me in this new column.
And I hope you send me your thoughts and responses and reactions
and inputs (to Richard@meridianmagazine.com).
Some of the ideas I share each week will be
a little half-baked, because they will be new, and that's OK, because
the whole idea here in this less structured column is to develop
our thinking together. We won't compare lives (comparing is usually
a negatively charged, energy wasting kind of thing to do). You and
I have different circumstances, different jobs, different challenges,
different needs. We may be in different seasons, and we certainly
see and feel different things.
And that is the good thing
about it!
I often try to think of people as "crystal
ball heads." Everyone has so much in their head — things
I have not seen, things I have not thought about, things they have
experienced that I have not. If you had a crystal ball in which
you could see everything, you would have unlimited awareness and
perspective at your fingertips. Well, in a way you do, because every
person has a crystal ball head, and if you can look into their heads,
trying to see what they see and find out about what they know, your
own perspective and awareness would multiply by far more than you
could ever gain if you relied only on your own experience.
So journey with me, seek
with me, exchange notes with me, as we travel together
through the seasons of our lives. See you next weekend.
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