The father of one of our closest friends passed away at the end of April at the age of 92. To hear it told, he’d lived a very full and rich life. One of the things he left for the generations to follow was a collection of poems, sayings, and other bits of wisdom he’d gathered since he was 17 entitled, “Bread for the Journey”. Every once in a while, I’m going to pick something from there to share with you.
The first is an excerpt from Sidney Jourard‘s 1971 book entitled, The Transparent Self:
“A person lives as long as he experiences his life as having meaning and value and as long as he has something to live for — meaningful projects that inspire him and invite him to move into his future. …
[People] die after the loss of money, work, their beauty, their sexuality, or a loved one, or status when they discover they are no longer the persons they believed themselves to be. …
When this ground for his existence is outgrown or lost, a person may begin to die. It is time for him to stop that way of life and invent a new way. Society needs a new specialist, one who helps people find new projects when their old ones which made life livable have lost their meaning.”