Celebration – Late Blooms

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.” – Richard Bach

Celebrating life whenever we have the opportunity and savoring all the special moments is an opportunity we should never pass up. Sixty-fifth and seventieth birthdays have their own blessings – because we didn’t ever expect to live this long. To wait for a child to be present for the celebration who also had a birthday we were not present for is a gift beyond words. “Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.” (Jean Anouilh) Our enjoyable celebration took place at Sassafraz in the Yorkville area of downtown Toronto. We savored the food, each other, and the passage of time.

Bloor-Yorkville. This Toronto hotspot is strictly upper crust. One of Toronto’s most elegant shopping and dining areas, Bloor-Yorkville’s designer boutiques, antique shops and galleries are absolutely first class. The area features many small courtyards and alleyways, and a contemporary park located in the very heart of the neighbourhood. The park features a giant granite boulder, which brings the raw beauty of cottage country right into Toronto’s urban centre! It’s a great place to rest between shopping bouts. (Toronto Tourism) — Bloor-Yorkville.
This Toronto hotspot is strictly upper crust. One of Toronto’s most elegant shopping and dining areas, Bloor-Yorkville’s designer boutiques, antique shops and galleries are absolutely first class. The area features many small courtyards and alleyways, and a contemporary park located in the very heart of the neighbourhood. The park features a giant granite boulder, which brings the raw beauty of cottage country right into Toronto’s urban centre! It’s a great place to rest between shopping bouts. (Toronto Tourism)

After dinner, we strolled around the neighborhood and enjoyed the sights. It was a time to relax and continue the celebration of our years of life and we were doing this together. To forget about time and all the things that needed to be done was to feel like children again. It’s so easy to get caught up in “to do” lists, planning for “big” projects, and the like, as we make this journey through life. We forget to savor the little walks and talks, discoveries and enjoyable experiences in the “now” – as we did that evening. This is truly the time, if there’s to be any bonding as family, that it takes place. It’s never in the hustle and bustle and definitely not in some other time or place. “All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment.” (Byron Katie)

“If wrinkles must be written upon our brow, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.” – James A. Garfield

Many people of my age talk about feeling old all the time. It didn’t feel as though I was sixty-five years old that evening. There was a playfulness in my soul and spirit – those parts of myself that I talk about but don’t really understand. I felt like a child again who was happy to have a birthday party. This was an adult party though without the party hats, games and treat bags. I seem to have gone past that part of the child and emerged with the childlike birthday feeling minus the need for “more.” It’s a good feeling and what a wonderful celebration we had celebrating our three birthdays together. “To life.”

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.
Source: The Wisdom of Heschel”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

A truly transcendent evening!

Tag: Celebration

Celebrating Life!