I say this to my cat most days.

I said it the first time without forethought. 

I saw the curl of her self on the ottoman in front of me, leaned irresistibly to stroke her, and whispered, in awe, “You are perfect.”

I have made myself insane for years seeking absolute truths, debating the presence or achievability of perfection.

Then here’s a cat, an older stray from the Humane Society at that, not an ardently reared purebred, asleep in my office, and what I seek is here.

I wouldn’t change the mismatched tints of her eyes, the body-and-a-half length of her tail, the circle of her protruding lower lip.

I wouldn’t change her inner workings.  I am sorry she suffers.  Most cats run.  She and I have a system.  She sits up in discomfort, I lean over her, my hands opening as if from prayer.  I catch her upset.  I rinse my hands, she grooms, we settle back into our lives.

She is herself.  Therefore, she is perfect.

Having never had a child, I cannot know if human parents see their human children as perfect, if they accept the who and how of a child’s existence as the wholeness of the child’s occurrence on the planet.

I might have wanted to change a human child, to wish the child were different in some way, to urge the child to be other than he or she was in order to serve me in some way, to reflect well on me, or to gain some advantage in the world.

I think that might be natural in a parent, or at least natural in a contemporary American parent.

By wanting to change the child, I would have missed the perfection of the child.

“Kids, be free.  Be who you are, be whatever you want to be.  Just don’t hurt anybody.”
--From memory, lyrics to a song from the rock opera Hair, the score to which was one of my first record albums

“Like sand in the something of an hourglass, so go the days of our lives.”
--From memory, tagline to soap opera “Days of Our Lives” I watched with my mother and sister when I was a child

As my one-year quest to answer all of life’s questions before I turn 50 becomes sand in the something of an hourglass, I am having some insights.

I have not enjoyed my life as I could have.

Much, much of it was spent straining to intuit what others wanted and needed in order to rescue them from their sorrows or disappointments, or to launch them into new heights of growth.

I have five, four-drawer filing cabinets full of meticulously researched, thoughtfully expressed, carefully crafted, artfully presented handouts, proposals, letters, articles, short stories, poems, and plans representing effort after effort to lift and inspire.

One filing cabinet for each decade.

I found some of my efforts deeply moving and others have said that I helped them along the way.  Good.

But I find I have not been so much who I am, but more who I perceived others needed and wanted me to be.

At 50, I contemplate a life spent largely other-focused and chronically self-depleted.

I wonder, if like 40 years of television, 50 years of striving might be enough.

The last decade of my fifty years of life, I have spent without television.

The few times I have watched it at someone else’s place, I have enjoyed it.  If someone else picks a movie on DVD, I’ll watch it.  I don't begrudge others their pleasure in television.  I'm sure I would find some programs of great value to me.

My television-less life is not from a moral or political decision. 

I find I have so many more interesting things to do.

For me, forty years with television is enough.

Several people have described me recently as “energetic.”  I would prefer “catalytic,” since that would mean the energy helped make something happen, rather than dispersed like a downed powerline in a hurricane, snaking and sizzling ineffectually.

However, that I would be described as energetic makes sense to me.  As I count down the days until I turn 50 (21 left), I realize I have practiced energy for half a century.

I think hard, feel hard, exercise hard.  I eat well, I sleep okay, I nap great.

After fifty years of disciplined, intentional energy training, how would I not be full of ideas, passion, and strength?

An excerpt from There, Anne's Triathlon Training:

Insights I have had as a result of a one-year quest to resolve all personal issues before turning 50 so that the next how-ever-many could be error-free:

Despite my creativity, my intent, my will, my earnest, intense effort, I am hard to change.  As much as I might wish to be different, other, or more, after 50 years of a practiced pattern, the pattern probably will not be subject to much altering, despite my best efforts.  There’s a “this is it” finality to that which saddens me somewhat. 

My striving and seeking to find the one truth is a quest I must relinquish.  My striving and seeking to find, in any situation, which is black and which is white, which is good and which is evil, must be relinquished.  My yearning to always, always follow the high road is admirable and sweet, but ultimately naïve.  “Always” is much rarer than I thought.  What is right and what is wrong in any situation is so often unclear and the choices seem to array themselves on a continuum of sort of right or sort of wrong.  Judgment calls must be made and uncertainty must be tolerated.

I think I believed I would find peace in absolute certainty.  All I had to do was determine that absolute and I would be free of the unquiet of doubt.

Probably peace, although I still find myself resisting this, is found in accepting the ever-presence of uncertainty.