I’m 50, which might be the peak age, if you’re healthy and take care of yourself, for feeling like you’re not getting older. For feeling like time passing is a rather small thing, a quiet thing, a subtle thing. Sure my red beard has flecks of white, and I’ve lost some hair, and I’m more wrinkly and scarred, and my knee hurts…but overall I’m just same-old-Waylon. Seemingly.

But the years pass.

We come together and fall out of touch. Lovers. Friends. Dogs. Family. Presidents. Towns. Homes.

We come together and fall out of touch. The years trickle by, like a quiet spring running just under the earth beneath our feet. We know it’s there, but we can’t hear it over our chatter and drama and loud thoughts and challenges and victories and defeats of the day.

A select few beings love us, and we love them, and our days together are counted in thousands, not dozens. But even then time is finite. Though, looking forward, the days are long and the hours longer, looking back…time is short, quick, a flash or even 100 flashes of memory. Those quiet or loud but always precious memories are the only times when we are fully present with one another.

So I say lean in. Lean in through daily vicissitudes and busy-nesses and fears and habits, lean through all of it to original raw naked open love, and say, “I love you” to someone you love. Take the time to express love. Take the time to scratch your horse or dog or cat where they like it, to stop and hug that tree you love or stop by the statue that gives your life meaning or just stare at the sky, the clouds rolling by like liquid silver fire.

I say this to myself: lean in. And if that feels right, so I say to you!