Seventy-Seven

Born February 27th 1949

I am seventy-seven.

Not approaching it. Not reflecting on it from a distance.

I am here — inside it. The clock has turned. The threshold has been crossed. And what surprises me most is not grandeur, but simplicity.

There was no revelation descending from the sky. No sudden arrival of perfected wisdom. There was only breath. Only this quiet room. Only the small, steady warmth in my chest — that inner fire that has carried me through grief, illness, confusion, love, rupture, and long seasons of unknowing.

I am seventy-seven, and I feel both ancient and newly born.

I feel the fragility of the body now. The carefulness required. The nervous system that has labored across decades to find coherence. I feel the way memory shifts — some moments crystalline, others dissolving into mist.

And yet I also feel something clearer than ever before: I am not shrinking. Something in me is ripening.

There is less proving. Less urgency to be understood. Less attachment to being right. There is more quiet. More listening. More willingness to let love speak in the smallest of ways.

At seventy-seven, I no longer confuse intensity with depth.

Depth is simple. Depth is steady. Depth does not shout.

What remains in me now is trajectory — a steady turning toward light. Not dramatic light, but the kind that softens a room at dusk. The kind that makes a sanctuary feel safe.

And from this place, I see something humbling: Out of all of it — the suffering, the searching, the rebuilding — I get to serve. Not because I have mastered life. Not because I am complete. But because I have walked honestly through what has been given.

I get to sit beside those who are afraid and not rush them.

I get to write from silence rather than from theory.

I get to offer presence instead of answers.

I get to remind others — and myself — that beneath the turbulence of our stories, there is something unbroken. At seventy-seven, service is no longer effortful. It is availability.

It is being willing to let what comes from the other side of silence move through this aging body and speak — or write — or simply sit. I am seventy-seven.

Still building sanctuary, inside and out. Still tending the body. Still listening for what love asks next.

And I know this much: I am not finished. I am ripening. And in this ripening, I am more available to love than I have ever been.

Nigel

Meditation Sans Frontieres 501 (C) 3 Non Profit Registered Charity TAX EIN 81-3411835