Someone said something at our ministers’ meeting on Thursday that really got me thinking (you know I can’t tell you who said it, or what they said, because of our confidentiality agreement). It was a simple thing, said in passing about a common human situation, but what this person said made me more aware of something inside me. I thought to myself: Oh, I need to look for that in myself! that’s a part of me I haven’t really explored before. And I thought: Will I ever come to the level of wisdom that this person has come to? — for I was suddenly aware of how little I know, I was suddenly aware that there are vast regions of human wisdom that I have never explored at all.

Oddly, I didn’t despair at such sudden awareness of my own gross ignorance of my self; I felt relieved, I felt feelings that I hadn’t been aware of before, I felt a little excited at these new realms to be explored. I think this is the best part of middle age: I keep on finding vast new areas of life to explore.