Reboot Your Life – Is It An Option?

I woke up the other morning wondering what life might be like if I could “reboot” like a device.

Our phones and laptops all offer that option. Something gets scrambled, stops working, freezes up—and with a simple command, everything shuts down, resets, and comes back…aligned and functional. Ready to go again.

I have no idea what actually happens inside those machines. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could do the same?

Not start all over from the beginning,  not lose everything we have learned and stored in a brain that is already overfull. Just reset the system.

What an Air Fryer and a Cassette Player Taught Me About Mortality

We had an air fryer that worked beautifully. Every single day, right on cue, it cooked away without complaint — until one afternoon when it didn’t.

No warning. No red lights. Not even a polite little cough before the whole machine went silent.

No lights. No heat. No supper.

I’ve been thinking about that air fryer more than I probably should.

Is that how it goes? One day, everything is humming along, and then — nothing? No trade-in value, no warranty claim, just… done?

There’s also an old cassette player that’s been sitting around here. It didn’t quit as dramatically as the air fryer.

When we finally went to use it, it just sort of moaned and squeaked and refused to turn the tapes.

Maybe that’s a kinder version of the same ending — a slowing down, an inability to make music anymore. Just a low sound, and then not even that.

The difference between that cassette player and me, I suppose, is that there’s a designated place where I’ll be laid to rest.

The recorder is in a landfill.

We don’t call our cemeteries that, though perhaps there’s a conversation there for another day.

Here’s the thing — most of us would rather do almost anything than think about this.

On the Things We Label “Legacy”
and What Actually Matters

We argue about where we go after we die, or who inherits the bone china, or who gets Grandma’s photo album.

We leave behind trust funds with no designation and let the lawyers sort it out — which, if you’ve watched that process, you know who really inherits what in the end.

I’ve spent years thinking about legacy. Writing about it. Leading a class on it.

I have met with an elder care attorney about the material side of things.

Journals, photographs, creative projects — all labeled “legacy” in my mind.

And then I got sick a while back. Not dangerously so, thank goodness — but sick enough for a couple of days that I couldn’t focus on a single thing.

And you know what? Nothing mattered. Not my life’s purpose, not the unfinished projects, not my opinions on politics or religion or the best exercise for people past eighty.

Nada.

For a brief stretch, it all simply vanished from my radar.

Is that what the end feels like? You care fiercely right up until the moment you don’t — and then it all becomes someone else’s beautiful, complicated problem?

Why Rest Feels Like Surrender
(And Why It Isn’t)

Some days, I feel like my battery is completely dead.

And unlike our phones, I have no charging cord to plug in, no way to wait a few minutes and then churn forward as if nothing happened.

When the battery goes, the only option is to stop everything and rest.

Which is harder than it sounds. Why is that?

Maybe because we’ve been taught that rest is surrender.

That slowing down is losing ground.

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“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — E.M. Forster

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Regrets, the Ninth Decade,
and Holding What We Love a Little More Loosely

I am drawing close to my ninth decade (doesn’t that sound awful?) But if you count years 1 to 10 as the first decade, then when I turn 80 in another year it will be the start of my ninth!!

Wow! Whodda thunk it would get here so fast!!

Anyway, I find myself thinking more about my last days. Not my last hours — those will take care of themselves.
But the days before that. Will I finish the book I will be in the process of writing? Probably not, if I’m honest.

Have I told my grandchildren and great-grandchildren how much I love them? Not often enough. Never often enough.
Have I paid my debts — financial and spiritual? Not entirely.

Am I leaving without regrets? Now that one gives me pause.

Counting regrets is a bit like counting the tissues in a new box of Kleenex and calling it exercise. Useless, and vaguely exhausting.

I regret not finishing college when I was young. I regret marrying before I really understood what it would take to sustain that kind of love.

I regret the money spent on… I’m not even sure what.

I could have traveled to the Far East.

I could have funded a shelter for the homeless.

I could have bought a very fine violin and actually practiced it.

But here’s what I’m learning…slowly. The regrets aren’t the point. They never were.

That morning, when nothing mattered, when the fever had its way with me, and I couldn’t hold a single strong opinion, something shifted.

All those things I’d labeled “legacy?” The stories? The dedicated journals? The (metaphorical) bone china?

They only matter now, while I’m living. When I’m gone, they can matter to someone else… or not.

Either way, I won’t be here to worry about it.

So why do I care about them now?

Maybe because caring is what the living do. It’s the signal that we’re still here, still making music, still turning the tapes. Not needing to reboot yet.

Maybe the goal isn’t to let go of caring .. It’s to hold the things we care about a bit more loosely.

To love fiercely and also to trust that when we’re gone, the world will figure out the bone china.

If any of this resonates with you, I’d love to hear about it.

What is it that you’re still holding tightly? And what might it feel like to loosen your grip, just a little?

You don’t have to have answers. Neither do I. But these are the conversations worth having, especially now.  Especially with each other.

Sending you blessings for a full and meaningful life, and inspiration to live it!

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This blog provides mostly questions — and few answers. If you are a ponderer about life’s questions, tell us where to send the next post!