When I first arrived in Toronto from my home in Vancouver in 1963 I felt somehow that it was the beginning of my life as an adult. I was 25, full of energy and hope and excitement. Everything was ahead; everything was possible. I was the generation of the future and it was the 60's. Life in this suddenly exciting city: its blossoming culture of the arts, theater, films; the transformation in 'rules' of relationships and just the whole new sense of what you could do, how you could dress, what you could think was being transformed. And I was part of it! It was exciting and it felt like the beginning of the journey of my life. All that had gone before seemed to be just preparation for this moment. 

When I arrived back in Toronto in 2008 after, among other things, 30 years in a monastery, living a life of silence and profound listening and contemplation it was a bit like dropping into the old/new life as if from Mars. All was both different and the same. One of those things that particularly struck me was to see around me the new 20's generation, the people I was part of just a blink ago. They seem to be doing, and perhaps feeling, pretty much as we did: life is ahead, all is possible, we will be different, we are invulnerable. Has every generation experienced this?

The point of all this as I see it from my new vantage point now is that I have become so much more aware of Time. Whatever Time is. Because what I know and experience is that I am old now and will soon die; my nieces and nephews who were the 'young beginners' when I left are now middle-aged, and even they face a new generation of youth. Time is doing its thing. And the only way I can describe this experience of Time is by using the word inexorable.  

So I find myself wondering yet again: how often do I, do we, actually examine our journey? How often do we stop long enough to ponder what we are doing, what kind of people we are becoming, how much we are present to the moment of now.  Do we actually ever take hold of the journey which is our life or do we just let things roll on and happen to us? It seems to me that the answers make a huge difference to how we will feel about our lives at the end - and there is, indeed, an end.

I found another quote from *Henri Nouwen on the same theme: In our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to work for answers instead of listening to the questions...but in solitude we can pay attention to our inner self. This has nothing to do with ego centrism or unhealthy introspection because as Rilke says, ' what is going on in our innermost being is worthy of our whole love'.

* Nouwen, Henri: National Catholic Reporter July 1974