Living Long, Living Passionately. Karen Casey

Efforts to Improve the World

       28. Fulfilling Your Potential

       29. Who Will You Bring to the Party?

       30. Make Yourself Smile

       31. Changing Ourselves to Change the World

       32. Reaching Out

       33. Influences

       34. We Become What We Think

       35. Listening for Messages

       36. Being in Charge of Who We Are

       37. Remembering Those Who Made a Mark on Our Lives

       38. The Greatest Gifts We Can Offer One Another

       39. It's Time for a Change of Pace

       40. Stepping Aside

       41. Be Kind

       42. Remembering the Little Things

       43. Having Goals

       44. Letting Go of the Past

       45. Feeling the Wow

       46. Your Mission Statement

       47. Shape Your Mind

       48. Overcoming Fear

       49. A Vital Person

       50. Cultivating Warm Relations

       51. What Are You Grateful for Today?

       52. Do You Like Yourself Enough?

       53. Your Mind Holds the Power

       54. Random Acts of Fun

       55. Expressing Thanks

       56. What's the Biggest Lesson of Your Life So Far?

       57. Be a Mentor

       58. Lead by Example

       59. What Makes You Come Alive?

       60. Age Aside

       61. Say What You Need to Say

       62. Your Timeline

       63. Life's “Accidents”

       64. Living in the Moment with Rapt Attention

       65. You Can't Change Others, So Change Yourself

       66. Is Real Peace Ever an Actuality?

       67. Telling Your Secrets

       68. Living with Death

       69. The First Day of Your Retired Life

       70. The Serenity Prayer

       71. Your Life Philosophy

       72. Recalling Your Life Lessons

       73. A New Challenge

       74. What if You Had Six Months to Live?

       75. Enthusiasm

      Author's Note

      Use this book as your guide and inspiration. Have a notebook or journal dedicated to the exercises you choose to do from this book. Take the book at your own pace—spend as much or as little time as you want to spend with any one topic. You can either go through from start to finish or skip around as topics appeal to your needs and interests.

      Explore fear and love, resistance and acceptance, willpower and discernment. Bring peace into your daily life. This is a book to return to again and again. Savor each of the seventy-five essays and the practices that follow it. Choose the ones that speak to you and discard the rest.

      Introduction

      Breathe, Pause, Breathe,

       Pause, Breathe . . .

      The gift of a somewhat retired life is having the time to fully appreciate the power of now, the power of nothingness. Which is, of course, the power of everythingness. This is a space I'm growing into in these days and weeks, hopefully months and years too, since turning seventy-five. Everythingness—what a glorious doorway to the unfolding of a life already well lived, and yet one that is ripe for far more living.

      Since the age of thirteen, I have been employed. I have also been an alcoholic since that age. Until now, I had not considered that parallel in my life. Does the alcoholism in fact “complement” the work life? I think it did for me. The drink was quite often the reward for work well done. As I aged, the alcohol also fueled the act of working. Seldom did I grade papers, develop strategic plans, or study for exams without a glass of Jack Daniel's by my side. It eased the transition between thoughts and words on the page. It eased all the years it took to become a PhD.

      Throughout the journey from drink number one to the celebration of thirty-eight years of abstinence, I passed through many portals of life, and seldom did I take the time to breathe, pause, and breathe again. I simply rushed by the events, the people, the inclinations to make choice A rather than choice B. I had never considered the idea