I like to take out a dear friend to lunch every month. He brings up Bernie almost every time the two of us meet, and he especially likes to remember how he and his wife, and sometimes he alone, would have dinner with Bernie when I was gone.

This happened after Bernie’s stroke. Before that, the two of us always had dinner together. We might be apart during the day, each doing his/her thing, but dinner was always together. That continued after his stroke, too, but if I travelled someone (or two) would come over to the house, heat up the dinner that had been prepared by a caregiver early in the day, join Bernie for dinner, and then, once he got tired and went upstairs, would wash up and leave.

My friend tells me the same story. He was having dinner with Bernie, maybe asked something, and Bernie said: “You know, Al, it’s just this one life and we all share it.”

I must have heard this story some half dozen times, but only recently have really taken it in. Sounds nice, right? But Bernie didn’t do nice. He’d be deep in thought, and then express things that seemed deceptively simple. Only he wasn’t simple.

It’s one life. I usually feel that I live my life, Aussie lives her life, others live their lives, with little understanding of any life other than our own. But Bernie said that it’s one life, and we all share it interdependently, our choices and actions affected by actions of everyone/everything else that constitutes this one life. It’s not just my life, it’s also the life of the Sawmill River below and the snowflakes falling outside, Aussie lying downstairs on the gorgeous blanket I received as a birthday gift. It’s also the life of coyotes howling outside, Donald Trump, hungry children, people living in New York City penthouses and those living way below, on the streets and even underground. Ripples of resonance everywhere.

Today I turn 75. Like many, I’m surprised and humbled that I have lived so long. 75 was going to be way in the future; that future has arrived. I feel humbled by all the people and things that have helped me age and taught me to own my itty-bitty, bubbly fleck swept along the gushing torrent. How? By choosing every single thing that happens all around me. Choosing not as in picking and choosing, but as in taking up everything as though there is no alternative—because there is no alternative to this one life.

Someone asked me last night what I do with birthdays, and I told them I generally spend them as I do other days. I love calls, greetings, loving wishes, cake and gifts—and I’ll sit in the morning, walk dogs (if the snow lets me), always, always find some time to write.

“Do you take time to look back on your life?” she asked.

Not particularly. On the one hand, it’s more than I ever bargained for, surpassed my wildest dreams. And on the other hand, it’s not that interesting.

“Reflection about the year?”

No.

It’s just one life, and we all share it, so I’m less and less interested in my life. I’m passionately interested in the entire kit-and-kaboodle.

I admit to getting excited by the near future, as long as I can stay healthy and half-coherent. Any time I am learning a new way of seeing things, I get excited. Any time I read a well-written book, I thank my stars. Lori bought me a beautiful blanket for the living room sofa which Aussie will use way more often than me; I was enthralled. I am happy that I still get invited to staff meetings of the Zen Peacemaker Order to put my head together with theirs and look into new ways of waging peace.

As the years go by, I think we get clearer about this. It’s not about waiting for catastrophes to happen and then wailing that there’s nothing we can do. It’s about preventing catastrophes. Buddhist precepts are a work of prevention; so is the Rule of the Zen Peacemaker Order. I’m especially moved by younger people expressing that how we live now simply doesn’t work, we need to find new ways of being human. If we don’t, we die.

In the deepest gloom, I feel optimism. One way or another, we are learning.

Galway Kinnell, in his gorgeous poem Astonishment, wrote:

Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping.
Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?

Not stopping anytime soon. Still singing.