Well, it happened last weekend. Stealthily, like a thief in the night, or a mickey slipped in my drink, it crept up on me when I wasn’t looking. Just the way life happens when you’re busy living it. One day at a time, one more year, and now another decade marking my trips around the sun. On December 1st, 2012, I turned 60.

This isn’t what 60 looked like in my parent’s generation. It may not be what 60 looks like in the future, now that we no longer raise our children on bologna sandwiches made with wonder bread and send them off to their rooms unseen and unheard while watching Father Knows Best re-runs. But it’s what 60 looks like for me. Loving friends and relationships, maturity in my work, beauty in my surroundings, a rich life in all the ways that matter.

What 60 really looks like is the view I see looking out at from within, honed by years of perspective. Gazing out my office window at my hilltop view, I see a new world coming into being, one that I just might live long enough to witness. I see promise and peril circling each other like a pair of dogs on the street, to see who gets fed the most. I see a generation coming of age, one that lived on the fringe for so many years, and are now becoming the elders.

We were the weird ones. We were into meditation, yoga, and having our religious experiences in circles rather than pews. We were back to the landers, with mud on our boots, planting trees in the forests and growing organic food. We were renegade do-it-yourselfers and visionaries who worked long hours on shoestring budgets with handwritten mailing lists to bring something better to the world.

And now we are taking the reins to the future. The previous elders are dying off, just as we will too when our time comes. The younger generation is more alive, dynamic, savvy, and involved than we ever were – even when we thought we were the next wave of enlightened ones.

Now we have technology to spread our messages far and wide. We are living at the time of the great cusp, the planetary birth, the global awakening, the discovery of our shared ground and collective heart.

The only thing 60 really means is that I’m old enough to remember the 60’s the first time around. The promise that came alive at that amazing time never died, it just went underground while we all did our personal work of cleaning up the mess of social shrapnel left in each of our psyches. Now we have an environmental mess to clean up – but our tools are so much better.

We can create Heaven on Earth, and in time we will. It’s in our hands, but fortunately, it’s much too large for anyone to hold alone. We each get only a few threads to weave into this dynamic tapestry.

And what do I want for my birthday? I want for everyone to be a part of that endeavor – to live with vision and possibility, to co-create from the highest to the manifested plane, to awaken the global heart, and to join together as Evolutionaries in the emerging symphony of the future. For what else were we born?

Blessings,
Anodea