Living Long, Living Passionately.

My newest book: LIVING LONG, LIVING PASSIONATELY, 75 (and counting)WAYS TO BRING PEACE AND PURPOSE TO YOUR LIFE, was released Sept 1 by Conari and is available on Amazon and in bookstores.  I am thrilled with it.  I guess I’d have to say that I have been thrilled about every book I have published, but this one does feel a bit different.  Perhaps that’s because it’s not specifically for folks in recovery, although I’d have to say that every book I have written has quite miraculously appealed to a wider audience than just recovering folks.  This fact has convinced me that all people are searching to feel better.  I’d also say that most of us are looking for ways to fill the empty hole inside.

I think as we age, particularly if we aren’t involved in meaningful activities, we begin to doubt our importance to others and that hole inside, (if there is one), begins eating at us.  Way too often we read about the elderly man or woman who has committed suicide, and we assume, sometimes correctly and sometimes not, that they no longer felt like they mattered.  To any one. I am here to insist that our presence does matter, and it matters to everyone whose path we cross today.  And every day.

I just completed a radio interview about Living Long, Living Passionately and the interviewer asked me what I hoped to accomplish with the book.  My answer is simple. And short.  I want readers to feel empowered to try new activities or resurrect old activities that they gave up when their lives were too busy with careers or raising children.  Or both.  I want every reader to be able to look themselves in the bathroom mirror every morning and say, “I am not done living. In fact, a new chapter has just begun.”

Being excited about this day, this very day, is a decision. And it’s one we can make each morning the moment our eyes open. In fact, just writing those words now excites me because I feel the empowerment I am trying to initiate in others.  Just as Richard Bach said on the back cover of his book, Illusions, a book I read in the mid 1970’s, “If you are reading these words now, it means you have not yet fulfilled your purpose in life.”  Those words then propelled me forward and I want to propel others forward with Living Long, Living Passionately.

I want to believe that I have made a difference in the life of at least one person in my current age category.  I want to inspire, in others, the excitement I feel upon waking every morning.  Life isn’t over, regardless of our age.  It’s a new chapter every doggone day and “the length of the novel” is up to us.  Happy “writing.”