Dear Reader:

I had an ” Eureka” moment yesterday when I came across a term I had never heard before… the ” End of History Illusion.”

It is a phenomenon that explains the unique way humans mistakenly perceive time in general. It explains why most of us won’t be the person we expected to be at the end of our journey.

Daniel Gilbert explains it this way: ” Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting, as temporary, as all the people you’ve ever been… just more experienced because you finally realize the one continuum in life… is change. We never stop changing until we take our last breath.

John Tierney explains how we humans can look back on our past, to our childhood, youth, early adult, middle age and see change in ourselves but for some reason humans expect ourselves to stay the same in the future. We can’t seem to apply past changes to future ones.

I plead guilty to my own personal history illusion. I pictured a sedate sedentary problem-less existence …being a grandmother and reading and hanging with friends… growing gardens… it looked like a scene from a Disney animated movie… sunny blue skies, surrounded by nature’s flowers. I could almost hear Snow White singing in the background.

And honestly… that has been a part of my retirement self-history envision. But just a part… life is also a continuum of problems… they don’t go away just because we retire or grow older… while we live… we will have to constantly contend with medical problems, financial problems, relationship problems, etc. If we don’t have a problem… we are dead.

But on the flip side… we also can’t see future opportunities either… that still arise and happily surprise us at older ages too… changing us inwardly along with surprisingly fresh outlooks not discovered earlier in our lives… perceptions that heighten our spirituality as well.

So until tomorrow… ” We are all just visitors to this time, this place, we are all just passing through. Our purpose is to observe, to grow, to LOVE, and then return home.” -Australian Aboriginal Proverb

Today is my favorite day… Winnie the Pooh

*****. Thanks to everyone who got back to me yesterday on the blog problems… seems like many of the daily email problems have started self-correcting and popping up again… Jo said the blog pops up on her email alright but it won’t let her comment? Anybody else experiencing that! Always something… problems that is… life! And thank goodness for it… for all of us.