It's been an unusual year. There have been some very high highs: I believe I'm doing the best work I've ever done with my clients and students; my brother David realized a long-held dream and opened a bar; I began writing for HBR; I stepped into a new role with Stanford T-groups; and I realized how much I have to be thankful for.
And there have been some very low lows: I failed at an important project; I blew out a disk and was in pain for months; I'm no longer in pain, but I'm still struggling to exercise regularly (and to meditate at all); I wrote almost nothing from March through August; and I was reminded (several times) of one of my greatest weaknesses.
Somewhere in the midst of all this--neither a high nor a low--I finally, truly grasped the essence of mortality, and Seneca's On the Shortness of Life has stayed with me:
There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn. It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and...it takes the whole of life to learn how to die... [I]t takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be stolen from him, and it follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time. [Ch. 7]
I'm a long way from living up to that standard, but I'm closer than I've ever been, and that's something.
Tonight Amy and I walked along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz and watched the sun set; it was a good way to end a year. See you in 2014.
