Your Quiet Radiance
I don’t think of myself as elderly—though if experience is any guide, I suspect others might see me differently. My body, still reasonably healthy for someone approaching 68, has begun to reveal its transient nature in small, unmistakable ways. Don’t worry, I’m not about to give you a tour of my MyChart ailments.
There was a time when I took my days of ease and energy for granted. Now I’m watching the whole sweep of life move with astonishing speed. And your days, too, are unfolding just as quickly. The challenge—maybe even the invitation—is to find a place inside ourselves where this truth doesn’t frighten us. Those who grow in wisdom learn to bend with life’s unpredictability rather than resist it.
So today, soften your shoulders. Let yourself breathe. Notice how the tides of your life swell and recede, and let balance find you as you move with them.
No matter how old we are, life can feel chaotic—spinning quickly, asking more of us than we think we can give. But beneath all that motion there is a quiet center. Place your hands over your lower abdomen for a moment. Take a slow, easy breath. That point just below your navel is the body’s natural center of gravity, a reminder that a steady wisdom has always lived within you, waiting just under the surface. Return to that place whenever life feels sharp, frightening, or overwhelming.
This deeper wisdom—your true essence—doesn’t depend on the age of your body or the chatter of your mind. You are more than the shifting forms you’ve been taught to identify with. You are something mysterious and resilient, something extraordinary that cannot be reduced to labels or limitations.
Hafiz once wrote, “I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
That is exactly what this inner center reveals. Beneath every storyline, beneath every fear or doubt, there is a wisdom that has never dimmed. When you rest in that quiet place, you begin to sense the light he speaks of—not as an idea, but as something alive within you, steady and unmistakably real.
That quiet radiance is already yours. It shines beneath every anxious thought, beneath every disappointment, beneath even the face you meet in the mirror each morning. You don’t have to hold everything together. You don’t have to become anything other than what you already are. There is something steady and luminous within you, something untouched by age or fear. Trust that quiet center. It has been guiding you all along.
