Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important.*
Arthur Brooks

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you,
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.**
John O’Donohue

Yesterday
I noted two intelligences at work in our lives:
The fluid KIND that wanes as we grow older,
And the crystallising sort that we are able to harness
fruitfully
Into the larger numbers of our years.

It could perhaps be said
that fluid intelligence leads to inventions
but crystallising intelligence leads to reinventions
beginning with ourselves.

The world is richer for it.

Brooks aligns fluid intelligence with a first curve of creativity
and the crystallising kind with a second,
But I’d even go as far as to suggest –
For those of us who strongly suspect we missed out on the first curve –
Here is another opportunity of a different kind.

*Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: A Blessing of Angels.