A Passion For Life

[I wrote this in the spring of 1982. It became a column in a newsletter coming from the senior volunteer organization that I had just been hired to direct.]

A PASSION FOR LIFE

I am the new director of the [....] program. I wanted to tell you about something that happened to me in the past couple of days. My awareness of the vitality of the life spirit has been greatly sharpened by three events or incidents, if you will, that burst into my consciousness and formed a pattern I wanted to share with you, a passion for life.

. . . A relative of mine has undergone open heart surgery for the third time and is hanging on with a tenacious will to live. She, at age sixty plus, chose the surgery, knowing the risks, because of her passion for life. Hers has always been a full life even though her heart problems really began at birth.

. . . A ninety-plus year old lady passed away the other day but the story was told that, just shortly before she died, she was visited by a pastor friend in the hospital. She greeted him gladly and laid aside the Newsweek magazine she had been reading saying with a little grunt, "I really am going to have to stop reading these things; I get so upset with the way things are going!"
At her age and in her condition, here she was still vitally interested and aware of the world. . . a passion for life to the very end of a long life of commitment.

. . . I am a first-time grandmother this very day. My eyes filled with joyful tears to see my young son grin as if his face would break as he contemplated his new beautiful daughter. Her visible dimples and curly dark hair seemed to captivate us all -- grandparents, sisters, nurses and other family members of newborns that we didn't even know. There was this new life lying there howling one moment and another looking at her new world as if she could not get enough of the view.

All of this has come to my mind for this column because it occurred to me that volunteering, for many Senior Citizens I have observed, seems to have just the same quality of vitality, commitment and yes, passion, that the scenes I shared with you exhibit. Let us hope that we at [this program] and at your volunteer stations can continue to make it possible for volunteers to have activities and work that satisfy deeply.

My topical post today at South by Southwest and The Reaction is about politics.

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