Your Soul May Be Calling You

A recent post on LinkedIn caught my attention. Sashka Regina, Leading Business and Life Strategist, is a person I admire for her creative and visionary approach to her work. She gets people like me who see mega visions, but who get swallowed in overwhelm with the process of getting there. Always ready to hear what people want to express without the "fix-it" sales script playing in the back of her mind, she's one of the most dynamic, present people I know.

Sashka brought up something in a post recently about Gen Xers and their ability to make great strides in business. (Check out her post HERE.) As a Baby Boomer, the conversation is much different as most of us have retired, are part-timing or empty nesting, or are still working a J.O.B. Can Baby Boomers get off the chuck wagon and begin a thriving career? The answer is yes, of course, but our careers look very different from Gen Xers. How do I know? My soul called me later in life as I switched careers at 54, began an adventure, and then found creative inspiration at 68. Currently, I'm finishing a book about the mystical transformation I experienced, and am writing a second book.

Sashka drills down and says Gen Xers are "reframing menopause as a life stage (not a medical condition)." If I may borrow the concept, like Gen Xers, some Boomers are going through a life stage instead of into a retirement home.

A change happens after crossing the 70-year-old mark. I remember meeting an elderly woman in my mid-twenties. I was flying home from Europe to Vancouver and had an experience I still remember vividly. We were sitting next to each other, and what I remember was her presence. I recall being so affected by her that the angst of leaving my boyfriend in Europe after a major fight vanished. Her head stood tall in contrast with her short stature, and her hands remained folded in her lap. Next to her, I felt surrounded by calm, peace, and serenity. She felt like the cathedrals I visited in Paris—expansive and mystical.

Another 71-year-old individual I know dedicates herself to her family's well-being. She is present for her children and grandchildren, teaching, leading, and guiding with humour and grace. She is the soul of her family. Is she focussing on herself? I don't think she'd even think of that question. She experiences joy in seeing her family thrive, and they are her life's mission. Both women have my utmost respect.

As we age, I agree there is a shift, a reframing, as Sashka says. This reframing takes place usually after something unexpected happens in our lives. It is usually traumatic and involves loss. We practice solitude, find and face ourselves, know and understand our shadows, and if we're living in the present and have cleared enough junk inside, we reconnect with our souls.

That's where the passion is as our souls direct our hearts, minds, and egos, and that passion directs us to look at the world differently. It's not about arriving, or even thriving in the ways we like to thrive. An elder who has transitioned from adolescence to the adulthood stage sees their role expanding into the community as they share their soul gifts with the world around them. Elderhood changes from the world of doing to the world of being. In that state of being, the energetic world responds with magic.

The magic is in knowing the intricate web around us—as a word lifts a heart, as a smile gives hope, as understanding brings healing. A word spoken is uplifting, a smile encouraging, and understanding can heal when they come from a place of deep being, grounded in the earth, and infused by the light of our souls. The elder perceives this intricate web of energetic connections, similar to the way threads create a tapestry. It's something one experiences within.

Your soul may be calling you to care for the land, the earth, our water, plants, and animals. Indeed, we are more powerful and can contribute more value to our more-than-human community than we can imagine. As an elder, when your soul calls to you, it is encouraging you to explore who you are and engage in a soul-inspired passion to benefit your community and the world.

Bill Plotkin writes about Crowning, which is his word for the transition that takes place before entering elderhood.

At this transition, we relinquish our conscious attachment to the embodiment of our individual souls — the definition of adulthood — and turn toward the tending of a more expansive domain, the soul of the more-than-human community....

With its implication of royalty, Crowning marks the transition into the highest social status, true elderhood. Crowning poignantly contrasts with retirement, which, in our adolescent culture, means the commencement of the social status considered to be, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the lowest — “senior citizen.”

Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, (California: New World Library, 2008), 59. Kindle.

Elderhood emphasizes who we are, not what we do. The challenge I see before all of us beyond the adolescent stage is to answer when you hear a call. It may be your soul calling you to pick up the thread that eventually weaves itself into the tapestry that is both you and the web of life.

There’s a thread you follow.

It goes among things that change.

But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford, THE WAY IT IS