Ten minutes of wondering, and a plain number had become a small cathedral of meaning. Which makes me suspect meaning was never the scarce thing we feared.

And yet so many of us, Boomers and Joneses alike, the eldest in the room now, confess a quiet hunger for meaning. How can that be, if meaning is so easy to make? 

I think it’s because, for most of our lives, meaning came to us ready-made. Faith and community handed it down, through the church pew and the neighborhood; work handed it to us, through the title on the business card and the answer to “So, what do you do?” Then, one by one, those sources thinned out or fell away. The job ended. The congregation scattered. And we found ourselves holding the pen for the first time, asked to write our own meaning, with twenty or thirty years of pages still blank and no one to write it for.

There’s an irony in that. We Boomers were the self-actualization generation, and now we’re discovering that personal fulfillment alone doesn’t carry us into elderhood.

Perhaps meaning was never something we possessed. Perhaps it’s something that happens between us, when what we carry meets someone who needs it. A word of encouragement, a story, a steady hand. Each one is a small transmission.

Bismuth, element 83, has fooled us for centuries into thinking it would last forever. It’s decaying, of course, like everything. But it’s doing it so slowly that it has all the time in the world to be useful. I’d like to think we’re a bit like bismuth: maybe not eternal, but with plenty of time left to give ourselves away. 

So here’s my invitation for this week. Think of one person, younger or simply newer to the road you’ve walked, who might need something you carry. It might be a skill, a story, or simply your attention. Reach out. Don’t wait to be asked, and don’t worry whether it’s wisdom enough. Meaning isn’t hiding in a number or waiting in a pulpit. It’s waiting in that conversation.

Next week: what the bucket list can and can’t give us.

Shine,