On January 1 of this year, Pulitzer Prize winner, Ellen Goodman, posted her final column in The Boston Globe. Since 1967, her words have championed civil rights for many. She has chastised the right and the left and the in-between. Like Bill Moyers of television fame, she’s been honest, compelling, and accessible in her open conversation about trying to make sense of our often-senseless world.
Even as she departs to an ACT II that initially will be marked by freedom from deadlines and summers on a porch in Maine, her very description of “retirement” sets the stage for my entry into 2011.
Here’s what she wrote: “The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well. It’s hard to recognize that life isn’t a holding action, but a process. It’s hard to learn that we don’t leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experiences and growth are grafted into our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along quite gracefully.”
Having gone through two horrific years, many of us are in Ellen’s same position: looking to “retire” from a set way of living and doing business. We want more. We have no intention of leaving behind our experiences—we just want a future that acknowledges every exit as being an entrance. (Ok—I admit I’d love a summer off on a porch in Maine ) but I am also ready to see what this decade can bring. I must close doors for new ones to open. I am winnowing away files, papers, products, books, clothes, and possessions—“stuff” that no longer serves. Yep—letting it all go. The recycled trash can is filled and four huge black lawn bags await Thursday’s pickup. Three bags sit at the library’s donation center. Two more bags are aimed for Goodwill. Retire. Retire. Let it go.
Ellen is.
Frankly, I will miss her honest, succinct and always thought-provoking words. At a time with the limited character count of Twitter is passed for conversation, I think we need more people to fill her role. Umm… maybe I will have to do my level best to be one small voice in the landscape, making sense of the often senseless. It will take many of us to fill her shoes. Why not let go and come walk empty-handed with me into this new decade? Better still, let’s hold hands together, take off our coats, and make dust. It’s how the world began anyway.